The Jewish Defense League (JDL) called for a boycott of Will Smith’s new movie, and for movie studies to blacklist Smith, because Smith said:

Even Hitler didn’t wake up going, “let me do the most evil thing I can do today.” I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was “good.”

The JDL’s webpage (and, I suspect, press release) carries the ridiculous headline “Will Smith Thinks Hitler Was Basically Good.”

After Smith released a statement clarifying that he thinks Hitler is evil, the JDL retracted their call for a boycott and Smith’s blacklisting, but maintained that “we stand by our original assessment that his original comments were offensive.” They haven’t revised their headline as of this moment.

Of course, Smith’s argument isn’t novel; it’s the sort of philosophy that gets chatted about among friends and family, and in Sunday school, frequently. (This was true even of my childhood Sunday school — which was Jewish). Contrary to the JDL’s reading, by using “Hitler” as his example Smith implicitly acknowledged Hitler’s ultimate evilness (the philosophical conundrum Smith discussed only makes sense when the example is a figure everyone recognizes as vile).

As Marc Lamont Hill writes:

In his quote, Smith accurately pointed out that people rarely view themselves as the living embodiment of evil. Instead, all of us are shaped by ideologies, traditions, and regimes of knowledge that shape who we are and how we view the world. As such, Hitler likely didn’t see himself as evil, but as an agent of what he viewed as positive social change. This doesn’t justify the massacre of Jews, it merely explains how individual identities and practices are constituted by coherent (though often deeply problematic) worldviews.

While I’m sensitive to Antisemitism — I supported the JDL’s boycott of Mel Gibson– this is going too far. Every time someone does more than call Hitler the devil incarnate, they aren’t supporting the Holocaust. Every time someone challenges the Zionist occupation of Palestine, they aren’t antisemitic. This type of thin skinned and reactionary media grandstanding on the part of the JDL does a radical disservice to the legitimate work against antisemitism that is being done around the globe.

Two quick thoughts:

1) Smith has publicly supported Barak Obama’s candidacy (and the JDL called for Obama to repudiate Smith); I doubt that a right-wing celebrity who had said the same thing would have gotten an angry response by the JDL. But a chance to combine liberal-bashing with publicity-grubbing isn’t something the JDL is likely to pass up.

2) The JDL’s inane attacks on innocent statements trivialize actual antisemitism.

Apparently they are fighting over a nativity scene.

The problem erupted after a Columbus man apparently complained about equality of religions in displays at state parks.

After a letter to the business manager of Ohio State parks regarding symbols of religion, an order came down to remove the nativity scene which the Garden Club has provided. the letter told all start parks in the state to take down their nativity decorations.

On Friday, Dec. 7, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland intervened.

Under current law, government entities (city halls, courts, public schools, etc) can generally acknowledge religious holidays so long as they do not create an impression of endorsement of religion by the government, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

Strickland issued an order mandating that Shawnee and all state parks continue their traditional nativity displays.

And he appears to be well within the law, according to the ACLU. “Just because a nativity scene or other religious display appears on government property does not necessarily mean that it is owned or is being displayed by the government, using tax dollars. Many local and some state governments have within their boundaries public areas whereby citizens are permitted to erect displays, including those of a religious nature, of their own choice” says the Ohio ACLU web site.

This is right in my parents’ backyard. This lodge is really fancy (at least by southern Ohio standards), and most of the folks who stay there are upper middle class folks, who come from places like Columbus and Cincinnati to explore the wilderness in the luxury of fancy hotel.

I wish somebody I know would go up there and put up a Menorah, and see how the locals respond. In my experience, a very large majority of southern Ohio folks are all for freedom of religious expression, when it in involves Christianity. But if somebody went up there and put up a Menorah or any other non-Christian symbol, they’d throw a fit.

I remember around the time I graduated from high school when there was some court decision about prayers at graduations. The administrators and students really wanted to have a prayer (of the Christian variety, of course), so they decided that the graduating seniors could vote on whether or not to have a graduation prayer. I bet I was the only person to say that I didn’t want a prayer. Of course, this was a school was everyone was a Christian or person like me, who was tired of Christianity. Nobody was Muslim; nobody was Jewish,;and if anyone was an atheist or any other religion, they wouldn’t say it publicly.

This is one nice thing about living in a town with a noticeable non-Christian population. There seems to be a great deal more tolerance.

From an campus newspaper account of a recent Ward Churchill speech:

Markevich responded by asking Churchill to clarify his Sept. 11 remarks.

“Three young high school students were traveling on a plane to an award ceremony. Of course, they never made it,” Markevich said. “They were murdered.”

“By Bush and Cheney,” someone shouted, to wild applause by some of the audience. Churchill smiled and shrugged, but did not comment.

“My question is, were those three students part of a cog in a capitalist machine and were they also ‘little Eichmanns’ who deserved to die as you claimed?” Markevich said.

“That was an amazingly stupid question,” Churchill said. “If you have a reading comprehension above the eighth grade, which you should have, since you appear to be impersonating a student up there, then you’d understand that those three … could not be construed as the technocratic core of the empire, and that’s who I described as little Eichmanns. That’s disingenuous bullshit you just spit out.”

1) What sort of idiot audience applauds “by Bush and Cheney” in this context? This sort of knee-jerk Bush-hating is just stupid. Let’s hate them for real things.

2) Churchill, whose firing I supported, is right to call this specific question misaimed; in his infamous essay, Churchill called the folks killed while working in the WTC “little Eichmanns,” not the people on the planes. That doesn’t mean Churchill’s “little Eichmanns” statement was less than repulsive.

3) In his speech, Churchill recycles for the billionth time the “Israel/Nazi” comparison, which I think is brainless, useless, antisemitic (what makes the “Israel is the new Nazis!” rhetoric attractive to folks like Churchill, I suspect, is not that the Nazi comparison adds any analytic power to our understanding of the Israel/Palestine conflict, but that the comparison is an especially hurtful thing to say to Jews). But the comparison of Israel and American “manifest destiny,” also made by Churchill, is more interesting to me, and I’d be interested in seeing the comparison developed by someone who — unlike Churchill — isn’t completely without class and credibility.

From a post on Oy Bay (curtsy to Muzzlewatch) entitled “San Francisco Art Gallery Censors Writing and Art Work as Too Zionist”:

Himmelberger Gallery, a well-known art gallery located in San Francisco’s tony Union Square, has decided to cancel plans to publish an art catalogue of one of its represented artists, noted author Alan Kaufman […] The gallery objects to the expressly Zionist focus of several essay contributions to the catalogue by well-known authors and journalists[…]

The catalogue was to present 15 of Kaufman’s paintings which are under contract to the gallery and whose subjects range from the Holocaust to Israel to the New Antisemitism. The gallery’s prices for the works in question have been cited at between $3,275 and $36,000. The works have hung in the gallery and a cross-section of them also appeared on the gallery website.

At a meeting between gallery head David Himmelberger and Kaufman, Himmelberger surprised the artist and author with an eleventh hour decision not to proceed with the catalogue due to the Zionist “agenda” of the essays as well as some of the paintings. Himmelberger said that such a presentation was antithetical to the aims of the gallery, which promotes “international understanding” and forswears all forms of nationalism and religion. But the authors see this as a transparent example of the way in which the word Zionism has been exiled from civil discourse and has been turned by the cultural establishment into a refugee of a word, a pariah of an idea, and a euphemism for Antisemitism.

Oy Bay also quotes a statement released by the “Zionist Five,” who are the five authors who were to be published in the catalogue. From reading the statement, my guess is that it’s not the word “Zionism” that scared the publisher away, so much as the extremism of the views presented. For example:

Let us, then, be perfectly frank about one thing. To vilify, marginalize, suppress or outlaw Zionism politically, socially or culturally, for any reason whatever, is to wish no less then murderous extinction upon every Jewish man, woman and child in the world today.

Note the “for any reason whatsoever.” Next time I hear someone deny that Zionists mix up criticism of Zionism with anti-Semitism, I hope I remember that quote; according to these folks, criticizing Zionism for any reason at all isn’t just anti-Semitic, it’s wishing Genocide upon the Jews.

Some thoughts:

1) It’s not censorship for a private publisher to decide not to publish a book. Kaufman’s belief that he’s been “censored for expression of a Zionist perspective” is over the top.

2) When I first read this story, I thought perhaps Kaufman was suffering from another form of censorship: When a publisher owns the rights to publish a work but refuses to publish it. I think that is censorship, but it doesn’t seem to be the case here; the gallery’s lawyer has said that Kaufman is free to publish the catalogue elsewhere.

3) There’s another form of de facto censorship, which is when objections to a point of view are so overwhelming that that point of view becomes impossible to publish, or is in some other significant way cut out of “the marketplace of ideas.” It’s implausible that’s the situation here, though; one gallery owner declined to print one catalogue, but most of the authors in the catalogue are published elsewhere.

Kaufman might argue that San Francisco’s “marketplace of ideas” effectively disallows pro-Zionist discussion. If that’s true, then that’s a reasonable complaint on his part. On the other hand, the fact that his paintings were displayed in a major San Francisco gallery, apparently without being protested, suggests that the San Francisco experience may not be as bleak as all that.

4) Kaufman sees an equivalence between his situation and that of Black men (what about Black women?) in “the old South”:

“My standing up and declaring Zionist art in San Francisco is really like a black man standing up in the old South and declaring himself a free man.”

The comparison trivializes slavery and Jim Crow, in much the same way that stupid concentration camp comparisons trivialize the Holocaust. (I do think that comparisons can be worthwhile when they’re intelligently made, as The Sideshow argues.)

Very few issues fill me with despair like thinking about Israel and Palestine.

I don’t understand why, when American Jews lean left, virtually all the major lobbies and organizations representing American Jews are on the far right. (Groups like AIPAC are strongly in favor of the Iraq invasion and have loyally supported Bush’s policies). Why, oh why, can’t we have a representative Jewish lobby?

(Speaking of which, see Glenn Greenwald’s recent posts on the ADL’s extreme reluctance to call out major right-wing figures for casually slinging around trivializing Nazi and Holocaust comparisons — 1 2 3 4 — even though they jump to criticize such important left-wing figures as an anonymous poster on Moveon.Org’s message board. Again, why do we American Jews — most of whom are liberal democrats — accept right-wing partisan hacks representing us in Washington?)

(But Glenn, you’ve missed a major example — the way that the ADL has never found time to criticize the word “Feminazi,” coined by Rush L., which Rush and other major right-wingers have been using nonstop for almost 20 years).

I’ve given up on any possibility of an honest debate or engagement with 99% of Israel’s supporters. I get it: Anyone who criticizes Israel, ever, in anything but the mildest of terms, is an anti-semite. (Edited to add the following sentence:) Meanwhile, far too many of Israel’s defenders are far too quick to dismiss any but the mildest criticism of Israel as anti-semitic. Rootless Cosmopolitan reports that Archbishop Desmond Tutu has now been branded an anti-semite, and St. Thomas University has accordingly cancelled a scheduled speech by Tutu:

Having asked sane and rational people to believe that Jimmy Carter is a Holocaust denier¹ simply for pointing out the obvious about the apartheid regime Israel maintains in the occupied territories, the same crew now want us to believe that Archbishop Desmond Tutu is an anti-Semite. No jokes! That was the reason cited for Tutu being banned from speaking at St. Thomas University in Minneapolis. “We had heard some things he said that some people judged to be anti-Semitic and against Israeli policy,” explained university official Doug Hennes.

Since the above quote includes the word “apartheid,” which people are bound to object to, I’ll point out this post by Tony Karon defending his (and Jimmy Carter’s) use of the term. (Karon, who is Jewish, is branded “self-hating” rather than anti-Semitic.)

Also branded anti-Semites: Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, Harvard and Columbia University of Chicago professors, authors of the current best-seller The Israel Lobby. Neither of them has a single documented instance of anti-Semitism, but they’ve published a scholarly book criticizing Israel, so they’re anti-Semites. Daniel Levy’s review of the book in Haaretz is critical and balanced, the most reasonable commentary on the book I’ve read so far.

UPDATE: Here’s the fourth post from Glenn Greenwald on the ADL’s apparent bias.

1. Tony is exaggerating here; Carter was called all sorts of foul things by Israel’s partisans, but they stopped short — just barely short — of calling him a Holocaust denier. (back)

One of these things is not like the other,
One of these things is not the same…

Can you guess which one?

Oh, I take it back. They’re all hilarious.

I’ve gotten several lovely emails in response to the “White Lies” cartoon. This one is notable for its rigorously narrow focus:

Your looks are jewish, your work is jewishily inspired and intended. The results of your agitprop are of benefit to jews alone. You are a jew.

Damn straight my looks are Jewish! At least some of my work is directly inspired by my Judaism. I’m fine with my work benefiting Jews (although I’d be kinda disappointed if no one else benefited). And yup, I am a Jew.

So I’m guilty on all counts, and yet… was any of that supposed to be derisive? It’s as if someone told me off by emphasizing how handsome, likable and well-groomed I am. If that’s the best you can think of for an insult — then for God’s sake, insult me some more.

Along similar lines, one of the folks on this racist site comments:

“Oh, its just another fat liberal man who was deprived of attention during childhood and does whatever he hs to to get his fill, just like Micheal Moore!”. JUST like the big MM.

Oh noooooo – I’m likened to an incredibly successful and popular Oscar-winning movie director! Oh, the horror, the horror!¹

Next they’ll insult me by telling me how great I smell…

1. And thank goodness only stupid right-wingers would respond to a cartoon they don’t like by making fat jokes about the cartoonist! Good thing us feminists would never do that, right? Right? Oh, uh… never mind. (back)

David at “The Debate Link” asks:

If saying that Jews who support Zionism are exhibiting “collective insanity” is not anti-Semitic, what qualifies?

I’d say this comment (which I didn’t let through) submitted to “Alas” by John Samhain may fit the bill:

White people are simpletons and saps who live in a constant B’nai B’rith endorced guilt trip. They are an extremely polite people (also known as saps to all other peoples of the world).

Look at what Amp the jew says (as the accuser): “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t; evil white non-jewish racist if you’re an active white non-jewish anti-racist, evil white non-jewish racist, if you stand for your own.

Amp is a disgusting zionist jew. He seeks to undermine non-jewish white people on all levels of our lives and make our lives more miserable in all of his actions; it’s in his religion; it’s in his blood; he will never have any Guilt for the hate he holds towards his host goyim.

Fro another example, consider this post by an anti-feminist who calls himself “Birdseye”:

If you study history, you will see Jews repeating this same formula over and over and over…likely because it works like a charm with each new, unsuspecting host! They have destroyed one country after another…leaving nothing but dry husks saddled with ironic guilt trips. Guess the formerly-great USofA is next! :D

(Disclaimer: This is just a general observation and I do judge each person by their own individual merits, Jewish or not.)

Despite Birdseye’s last-sentence disclaimer, one thing both these writers have in common is not only a disdain for Jews and Judaism, but a belief that there is something inherently evil about the Jews; what’s wrong with “Amp the jew” is “in his blood,” which is why “you will see Jews repeating this same formula over and over and over.”

My point is, contrary to what David’s question suggests, it remains possible to recognize antsemitism without resorting to David’s formula, which can be in effect summed up as “any very harsh criticism of Israel is antisemitism.” One could instead believe that antisemitism requires a bias against Jews and Judaism, and often believing that there is something inherently evil about being Jewish. Believing that particular Jews are being oppressive in the context of a specific political situation is simply not the same thing.¹

Matthew Yglesias, responding to Alvin Rosenfeld’s much-discussed essay “Progressive” Jewish Thought And The New Anti-Semitism (pdf file), accurately describes the “New Anti-Semitism”:

To be flip about it, the defining characteristic of the “new” anti-semitism seems to be that it isn’t anti-semitism. Certainly, to qualify as a “new anti-semite” it doesn’t seem to be necessary to have a bigoted view of the Jewish religion or of Jewish people as an ethnic or cultural group. The author pretends to argue that hostility to the existence of Israel as a Jewish state is the defining characteristic of the “new” anti-semitism, which is fairly ridiculous on its own terms, but as you read through the examples that’s clearly not what he’s saying. Rather, his view is that some people make what he regards as extreme or over-the-top criticisms of Israel, and that anti-semites would also make such criticisms, so therefore anyone who criticizes Israel too stridently is either practicing anti-semitism or else creating it.

In another “Debate Link” post, David approvingly quotes Rosenfeld’s response to critics:

Among others on the left, though, an often strident anti-Zionism is part of the ideological package that gives them their political identity. Their inclination to liken Israel to Nazi Germany and white-ruled South Africa–and their frequent excoriations of the Jewish state as guilty of “racism,” “apartheid,” “ethnic cleansing,” “war crimes,” and “genocide” draw from a common lexicon of hyperbolically corrosive speech and have helped to fashion an intellectual and political climate that encourages the demonization of Israel and its supporters.

What’s striking is that Rosenfeld doesn’t seem to consider that Israel’s policy choices have been instrumental to fashioning “an intellectual and political climate that encourages the demonization of Israel and its supporters.” No, no; it has nothing to do with the settlements, with the beatings, with the double-standard of law based on race in the occupied territories. What’s much more important for creating the negative view of Israel, apparently, is a small group of British and American leftist Jews, many of them completely obscure before Rosenfeld’s essay made them notable.

More importantly, note how broad a swath of language Rosenfeld suggests should be out of bounds to credible critics of Israel. I can see putting “genocide” out of bounds, but “war crimes?” The concept that Israel may have committed war crimes is now to be considered so out of bounds that the very phrase “war crimes” should never be used by credible critics, according to Rosenfeld? Similarly, are we to conclude that the word “racism” is “hyperbolically corrosive speech” and should thus be considered out of bounds for credible critics of Israel? How very convenient for defenders of Israel, if that’s the case.²

Do I think that demonization of Israel is a good thing? No, I do not. But I think it’s something the Israeli government has brought on itself with its policy choices. (Similarly, demonization of Palestinians is wrong, but it’s been brought on the Palestinians by the acts of Palestinian extremists and terrorists.) And both sides in this conflict have given critics plenty of reason for the use of hysterical, furious and extreme language, without having to believe that those employing such language are motivated by antisemitism or by racism.

You don’t have to have a bias against Jews to think that Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the occupied territories is disgusting and racist, or to think that Israeli conduct should be investigated for possible war crimes. Nor should concern for “fashioning” a negative political environment for Israel be permitted to put questions of Israeli racism, war crimes, and apartheid-like policies outside the boundaries of credible discourse.

1. To be sure, Jacqueline Rose, the author of The Question of Zion, from which the “collective insanity” quote is taken, is an idiot. And it may be that she’s an anti-Semite, despite being Jewish herself. But the mere fact that she’s an idiot who uses over-the-top language to criticize Israel does not, in an of itself, prove antisemitism. (back)
2. I also think the word “apartheid” is one that can be used by reasonable critics, although I choose not to use it myself. I discuss the Israel/Apartheid comparison in this post. (back)

Racialicious writes:

Apparently there’s been a lot of anti-semitism in Seattle lately, prompting their alt-weekly to devote an issue to Jewish issues. But check out the graphic they chose to illustrate one of their regular columns. Textbook hipster racism.

That’s the graphic over to the right. Racialicious is one of my very favorite blogs, but I’ve gotta say, this case doesn’t look so textbook to me. I asked about it in Racialicious’ comments, and Lyonside wrote:

The drawing is reminiscent of the hooked-nose portraits of Jewish men so common to the medieval and modern era. A more subtle dig may be the thinning hair on top, but in general, the nose that was longer than the cartoon’s HEAD (in profile) is the obnoxious part.

I’m sure it was meant to be ironic, but I see it as a lack of taste. And awareness.

It’s just not true that the nose is longer than the profile’s head. It’s a big nose, but it’s not that big. And although the nose is exaggerated, it’s not distended and freakish, like the noses in “classic” antisemitic cartoons often were. Look at the noses (especially the husband’s) in this German cartoon from 1934, for example:

Look: I have a big nose. And it hooks. Many of my relatives also have relatively big, hookish noses. It’s a common trait among Jews whose folks came to the US from Eastern Europe. Are cartoonists supposed to pretend that me and thousands of Jews like me don’t have this nose? And how will wiping out representations of Jews with a classic Jewish nose — those Jews, in other words, who are least likely to be mistaken for gentiles — be a blow against antisemitism?

[Crossposted at Creative Destruction. If your comments aren’t being approved here, try there.]

In a previous post, I asked “Alas” readers about the translation controversy regarding Chavez and antisemitism. In the comments, Elana, who is a professional Spanish translator, said the real issue is “do references to ‘Christ killers’ and ‘gold and silver’ have the same connotations in their culture as they do in ours?”

Since then, I’ve come across an article which convincingly suggests that “Christ-killers” does not have the same antisemitic connotation in Venezuela. The article was originally printed in the Forward, an American Jewish magazine that I think is generally credible.

Here are the most relevant bits (emphasis added by me):

The Venezuelan Jewish community leadership and several major American Jewish groups are accusing the Simon Wiesenthal Center of rushing to judgment by charging Venezuela’s leftist president, Hugo Chavez, with making antisemitic remarks.

Officials of the leading organization of Venezuelan Jewry were preparing a letter this week to the center, complaining that it had misinterpreted Chavez’s words and had failed to consult with them before attacking the Venezuelan president. […]

Both the AJCommittee and the American Jewish Congress seconded the Venezuelan community’s view that Chavez’s comments were not aimed at Jews. All three groups said he was aiming his barbs at the white oligarchy that has dominated the region since the colonial era, pointing to his reference to Bolivar as the clearest evidence of his intent.

One official noted that Latin America’s so-called Liberation Theology has long depicted Jesus as a socialist and consequently speaks of gentile business elites as “Christ-killers.”

So it appears that the strong case for Chavez being an antisemite is based at least in part upon an unfair translation.

There are also translation controversies regarding antisemitism and the statements of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran; the arguments and counter-arguments are described in this Wikipedia article. To me, criticism of Ahmadinejad for antisemitism seems - if not absolutely certain - on much firmer ground than similar criticism of Chavez. On the other hand, like Y-Love at Jewschool, I do see Ahmadinejad’s explicit separation of “zionism” and “Jews” as a potentially positive step.

So why am I bringing Ahmadinejad up? Because Chavez has praised Ahmadinejad publicly (that’s the two of them pictured together on the right). (It’s notable that Venezuelan Jewish leaders have expressed “outrage” at the friendly relations with Ahmadinejad).

People have argued over if Ahmadinejad’s statements are anti-semitic - did he really call for Israel to be wiped off the map, or did he just call for the current Israeli government to be replaced? There is, however, no doubt at all that Iran’s policies are deeply anti-woman. In a woman’s enews article, Jennifer Fasulo points out that “moments like this show just how little women’s lives matter in the world of nationalist politics.”

There is no excuse for declaring solidarity with a theocratic regime that treats women like sub-humans. By embracing Ahmadinejad, Chavez is adding steam to the growing and dangerous alliance between left-wing and right-wing anti-imperialism.

In this equation, the only thing that matters is opposition to U.S. military power. Women’s rights, worker’s rights, student’s rights–the things that are supposed to matter to socialists, progressives and people of conscience–be damned.

Chavez appears not to have noticed that the current government of Iran has turned Iran into a country where gender apartheid and hatred of women are enshrined in law.
Regime of Violent Repression

This is a country where women are stoned to death for the “crime” of adultery, buried up to their necks and pelted in the face and head with stones until they die, where women have no right to divorce or child custody, are legally forced to veil under threat of physical beating or imprisonment, can’t travel without the permission of a husband or father, where their testimony in a court of law is considered half that of a man, and where political dissent of any kind, for women and men, is punishable by imprisonment, often torture and death.

This is the government that Chavez compares to his own as a “heroic nation,” one which he even deems “revolutionary.” […]

For 27 years women have resisted and defied the [Iranian] regime’s persecution of them, often at great risk to their lives. Along with an inspiring women’s movement, there are strong, secular workers and student movements, all of them opposing not only the Islamic Republic, but also U.S. threats of military attacks and sanctions on Iran.

How can Chavez–a declared socialist and defender of the downtrodden–align himself with the leader of such a reactionary regime, rather than the inspiring socialist and feminist movements which are fighting against it?

Fasulo’s entire article is well worth reading.

[Crossposted at Creative Destruction. At the time I’m posting this, comments at “Alas” are borked, but the comments at Creative Destruction are still working.]

Yeesh. Fearing for their safety and their ability to lead an unharassed life, a Jewish family has fled a town in Delaware. From Jews On First.com:

The complaint recounts that the raucous crowd applauded the board’s opening prayer and then, when sixth-grader Alexander Dobrich stood up to read a statement, yelled at him: “take your yarmulke off!” His statement, read by Samantha, confided “I feel bad when kids in my class call me Jew boy.”

A state representative spoke in support of prayer and warned board members that “the people” would replace them if they faltered on the issue. Other representatives spoke against separating “god and state.”

A former board member suggested that Mona Dobrich might “disappear” like Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the atheist whose Supreme Court case resulted in ending organized school prayer. O’Hair disappeared in 1995 and her dismembered body was found six years later.

The crowd booed an ACLU speaker and told her to “go back up north.”

In the days after the meeting the community poured venom on the Dobriches. Callers to the local radio station said the family they should convert or leave the area. Someone called them and said the Ku Klux Klan was nearby.

Gosh, why would any Jew decide to move out of a swell town like that?

Jesus’ General contacted the folks at the Stop The ACLU Coalition, who had encouraged harassment of the Dobriches (they even posted the Dobriches’ home address and phone number on their website). The director of Stop The ACLU responded:

Pogrom? I’m not sure I want to call it that. That is not an appropriate term, however, I am pleased that we had an effect in this case.

Bitch PhD worries, justifiably, that blogging something like this is pointless:

…My first thought was, “blog this.” And then I thought, “what for? The only possible reaction is “those people suck,” and it’s one of those atypical weird cases that, if anything, surely demonstrates that the country as a whole doesn’t think that way.”

I think Bitch has a point; but at the same time, I think this case is an interesting illustration of the dynamic between centering and othering. The anti-semitic bigotry which so many Christians in the Indian River School District began not with “Othering” - that is, with singling out Jews for treatment as deviants - but with “Centering” - organizing their town’s institutions to center on the assumption that being Christian is the default.

So, for instance, school vacations are called “Easter Vacation” and “Christmas Vacation,” rather than being called spring and winter breaks. School facilities were used for Bible Club, and Bible Club members were given special privileges (such as skipping to the head of the line in the school cafeteria). School board meetings and graduation ceremonies begin with invited ministers leading a prayer to Jesus.

None of the above acts are implicitly anti-Jewish, and all of them are things that many Christians might well decide to do even if there were no Jews (or any other non-Christians) around to discriminate against. These policies and acts reflect a belief that being Christian is a default state. And some of these policies I approve of; for instance, schools should give Good Friday off, because that’s a reasonable accommodation. Bible Clubs shouldn’t be given favorable treatment compared to other clubs, but I think schools should facilitate them (by letting them use classrooms) just like they should facilitate chess club.

Centering is harmful to minorities not only in material ways, but also because of the message sent that minorities are not part of society. For instance, when Christians are given their holidays off, but classes are scheduled on major Jewish holidays, that obviously gives a material advantage to Christian students. But it also sends a message to the Jewish students that they aren’t full members of society the way Christians are. Centering sends the message that Christians are the default citizen; Jews are some sort of weird exception to the norm.

Othering refers to acts and policies which directly position Jews as deviants. From Jews On First:

Among numerous specific examples in the complaint was what happened at plaintiff Samantha Dobrich’s graduation in 2004 from the district’s high school. She was the only Jewish student in her graduating class. The complaint relates that local pastor, Jerry Fike, in his invocation, followed requests for “our heavenly Father’s” guidance for the graduates with:

I also pray for one specific student, that You be with her and guide her in the path that You have for her. And we ask all these things in Jesus’ name.

Samantha Dobrich was thus “othered” at her own graduation ceremony - and by a pastor who, I have no doubt, is convinced that he acted only out of love and a concern for Samantha’s best interests. But the Dobrich kids also felt less “benevolent” kinds of Othering, such as schoolmates labeling them “Christ Killers.”

What’s important to understand is that Centering and Othering are not opposites or flip sides of a coin. They are manifestations of the same problem, different in degree but not in kind.

Some people may disagree; they will say these two acts are vastly different, not just in degree but in kind. That’s true if we frame the comparison between calling someone a “Christ Killer” and a prayer at a School Board meeting by saying “was this a hateful act? Was the person acting out of bigotry and a desire to hurt Jews?” Clearly, someone yelling “Christ Killer” is acting out of hate for Jews, but a Paster leading a prayer to Jesus at a school board meeting may be acting with total indifference to how his (or her) act affects Jews.

But I think that framing - asking “what did the Christian mean? Were the Christian’s motives bad?” - is needlessly Christian-centered. We can come to different conclusions if we frame this in a more Jewish-centered way: Instead of fretting about the inner moral state of Christians, let’s ask how does this action harm Jews? While the Othering action (calling Jews Christ-killers) is more extreme and hateful, that’s a difference of degree, not of kind. Both Centering and Othering have the same effect, which is to make Jews feel less like citizens, less like equals, more like freaks.

I think it’s important to understand that Centering leads fairly naturally to Othering. The Christians of the Indian River School District don’t view themselves as anti-Semites aggressively chasing deviant Jews out of their nice Christian town (although that is what many of them in fact are). Many view themselves as victims of aggression; the ACLU, along with one local Jewish family, is attacking their right to live Christian lives. It is because these folks think their entitlement to worship is under attack that many of them have escalated their acts of Othering to such an extreme level.

But where does that sense of entitlement come from? It is only because of Centering that many Christians have confused their right to practice their religion with being entitled to have a Christian Paster open public meetings and ceremonies; only because of Centering that many Christians consider themselves entitled to take time off from class for Bible study, or to proselytize Christianity in the classroom. If society hadn’t taught them that they are the norm and others are deviants from the norm, then they wouldn’t feel so entitled to have every aspect of public life kow-tow to their religious beliefs.

Bitch PhD wrote that “the country as a whole doesn’t think that way.” But I think much of the country does think that way, if we can take “that way” to mean Centering Christians and Othering Jews; it’s just that the Indian River School District takes it to an uncomfortable extreme. The same kind of Centering is going on throughout the country, whether it’s the unwritten but ironclad law that says all serious Presidential candidates must publicly declare their allegiance to Christianity, or the assumption that if someone says “happy holidays” rather than “merry Christmas” that means Christmas is under attack, to “one nation under God” and “in God we trust.”

* * *

Note: Throughout this post I’ve mapped Othering and Centering onto Christians as Center, Jews as Other. But of course, the same basic mechanism operates in many other ways. Men are Centered, women are Othered. Whites are Centered, non-whites Othered. “Masculine” men are Centered, non-”masculine” men are Othered. Slender people are Centered, fat people are Othered. The ablebodied are Centered, the disabled are Othered. Cisgendered are Centered, Transgendered are Othered. And so on.

UPDATE: Also on this topic, I recommend this post at Even the Devils Believe.

(Cross-posted at Creative Destruction, where the moderation is less stringent. And a curtsy to Heron61.)

David at The Debate Link links to a column by Mark Steyn about Jews being murdered by Muslims in France.

The article is stirring, but I need more evidence to be persuaded, and so should David. Steyn himself isn’t a reliable source - for instance, Steyn once endorsed the homophobic myth that being gay leads to an early death (From Steyn’s review of a play about Matthew Shepard: “Maybe Matthew Shepard would have died anyway, not at twenty-one but at twenty-five or thirty, not because he was gay and someone killed him but because he was gay and it killed him”).

The evidence in Steyn’s article is entirely anecdotal. Has anyone done an empirical study of the annual rate of violent anti-Semitic incidents in France and in other countries over the past 10 years, for instance?

Some of the statements in Steyn’s story seem amazing and are not attributed.

It’s disgusting that “every public official” in France denying antisemitism - or it would be disgusting, if it were true. From a BBC story about Halimi’s murder:

Contrary to Steyn’s claim, it’s clear that at least some prominent public officials are calling this murder antisemitism. Note as well that the “Jews have money” quote that Steyn attributes to a police detective, presumably to imply that French police are antisemites, was (if Sarkozy’s statement was accurate) actually said by the murderers. That’s an appalling error for Steyn to make.

Given these errors, I don’t think it’s justifiable to take any of Steyn’s unattributed statements at face value.

Also, Steyn’s implication that anyone who thinks Israel is the leading threat to world peace must be “to put it at its mildest, indifferent to Jews” is similar to saying criticism of Israel is antisemitism. It’s hard to say for certain without knowing exactly how the survey was worded.Why couldn’t someone simultaneously oppose antisemitism, but also believe that the most likely hotspot to directly or indirectly cause WW3 is the Israeli occupation of the West Bank? The two views are not mutually exclusive.

I don’t doubt that antisemitism is a serious problem, including in France. But I’m not sure that the incendiary tone and lack of rigor in Steyn’s column is a useful approach to the problem (although it delights France-bashers, I’m sure). I’d recommend reading the “France” section of the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia’s report on antisemitism, instead.

Some interesting tidbits:

* The French Jewish community, at 600,000+, is the largest Jewish community in Europe. “In reaction to the anti-Semitic mood the number of the French Jews who immigrated to Israel in 2002 doubled to 2,566, the highest number since 1972.” At that rate, it doesn’t seem likely that a huge portion of France’s Jews will be immigrating to Israel, as I’ve heard some commentators predict.

* Antisemitic violence peaked in 2000, apparently set off by the Palestinian Intifada. At the time this report was issued, in 2003, violent incidents appeared to be dropping.

* France keeps excellent records of antisemitic incidents, compared to most European countries. This fact should be accounted for - or at least noted - in any country-to-country comparison of incidents.

* “The perpetrators [of antisemitic violence] were only seldom from the extreme right milieu, coming instead mainly from non-organised Maghrebian and North African youths. After interrogating 42 suspects, the police concluded that these are ‘predominantly delinquents without ideology, motivated by a diffuse hostility to Israel, exacerbated by the media representation of the Middle East conflict (…) a conflict which, they see, reproduces the picture of exclusion and failure of which they feel victims in France.”

* Nonetheless, a survey of North African youth in France found that:

* On the other hand, North African youth were more likely than other French youths to think that Jews have too much influence.

(Curtsy to this comments thread at Volokh, which is where I found virtually all the links and info used in this post.)

In response to the Iranian paper which is holding a “holocaust cartoon contest,” Amitai Sandy, a Jewish, Israeli cartoonist, has announced his own anti-Semitic cartoon contest, which only Jewish cartoonists may enter.

Reuters story here. Curtsy: Freakonomics Blog and Hit and Run.

David at The Debate Link has responded to my post on Chomsky and Holocaust Denial. Although David is a nice guy and one of my favorite bloggers, I think his response misses the target, both factually and persuasively.

Since my response is a bit long, I will split it into two parts. But before I get started, it’s important that I describe what I mean when I write “anti-Semitism.” As I use the term, anti-Semitism refers to:

1. Animus against Jews and Judaism.

2. Belief in degrading stereotypes about Jews and Judaism.

3. Support for rules, laws or principles that discriminate against Jews (i.e., “country-club anti-Semitism”).

There’s a overlapping-yet-distinct concept, which I’ll call “gentile-centrism.” Gentile-centrism refers to worldviews and institutions which assume that everyone is a gentile, thus marginalizing or making invisible non-gentiles, including Jews. So, for example, if a school gives everyone Christmas and Easter off but schedules final exams on the first two days of Passover, that’s gentile-centrism.

Definitions done, let’s respond to David.

Part 1. Chomsky, Chomsky, Chomsky.

David admits that Chomsky is no Holocaust revisionist, but writes:

That’s a shocking quote - indeed, years from now someone might point out I “defended” this quote to prove I’m an anti-Semite. (Wouldn’t be the first time; I’ve been compared to a Nazi for some of my cartoons which criticize Israel). Nonetheless:

1) David implies that this quote came after Chomsky said “we lose our humanity if we are even willing to enter the arena of debate with those who seek to deny or underplay Nazi crimes.” Actually, the “I see no anti-Semitic implications….” quote came about a decade before the quote about the Holocaust.

2) Chomsky’s point (as he has explained it) was, as a matter of strict logic, Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism are distinct. So, for example, “if a person ignorant of modern history were told of the Holocaust and refused to believe that humans are capable of such monstrous acts, we would not conclude that he is an anti-Semite.” That seems like rather cold logic to me - but Chomsky, a professor at M.I.T., is known for cold logic.

3) David’s quote comes from private correspondence to a Chomsky critic, published without Chomsky’s permission. This is usually considered an unfair practice, for good reason. When writing in private, most people don’t write as carefully or defensively as they do when writing for publication, because of time constraints and because of the good-faith assumption that the quote will never have to be understood apart from full context.

This is typical of how criticism of Chomsky works. Every word Chomsky says or writes - and Chomsky is ridiculously prolific - is fine-combed for evidence of anti-Semitism and (when they can’t find that) for evidence of having failed to criticize anti-Semitism. When a quote that makes Chomsky look bad is found - even from a dubious source, like an out-of-context snippet from decades-old private correspondence - it is republished thousands of times. If one conference speaker out of hundreds of conferences Chomsky has spoken at is an anti-Semite, that is taken as proof of Chomsky’s guilt. Every word that indicates the opposite - no matter how much more fair or clear - is dismissed, as David himself dismisses what Chomsky has actually said about Holocaust denial.

This is actually quite similar to how Al Gore was smeared as a pathological liar and race-baiter, or how Catherine MacKinnon has been smeared as a man-hater. No one who says and writes billions of words in public can possibly match a standard that says “if you ever say something that can be twisted when quoted out of context, that proves you’re a bigot.”

David, however, advocates an even harsher standard for Chomsky, writing “To be fair, the evidence seems mixed–but really, is this an issue where there should even be mixed signals?” So if a fine-tooth comb search of a lifetime of work comes up with two or three instances of “mixed signals” (such as defending the free-speech rights of an anti-Semite) , according to David, that’s proof that Chomsky allies himself with Holocaust deniers.

To answer David, yes, we should require more than “mixed signals” before we slander someone with this most serious of accusations. Ticking-bomb scenarios aside, there is no reasonable standard that says “the more serious the accusation, the less important it is to find clear evidence.” We do not, for instance, require less evidence to find someone guilty of murder than of jaywalking, on the grounds that murder is so important an issue that even mixed evidence should be enough.

Why has Chomsky been the subject of so much venom? I suspect it’s partly because Chomsky is a Jew who criticizes Israel. David, explaining why he objects to blacks calling other blacks “race traitor,” once wrote:

Similarly, the attempt to paint Chomsky as an ally of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial is an attempt by pro-Israel Jews to make Jewish critics of Israel into non-Jews. As David went on, in that earlier post:

So for blacks to call other blacks “race traitors,” based on political disagreements, is an unfair and terrible thing. But when Jews say (or at least, strongly imply) that other Jews support Holocaust-denial and anti-Semitism, based on a political disagreement about Israel, that’s okay?

David denies he’s trying to expel Chomsky and other Jewish critics of Israel from the Jewish community - but when the exact same techniques are used in the black community, he labels that “stripping them of their blackness.” Yet there is no logical distinction between the two acts.

Part 2. Anti-Semitism in the U.S. Today.

In the post David is replying to, I wrote (emphasis added):

Here is David’s response (emphasis added):

David has made an interesting rhetorical move here. I mentioned Pappe to show that supporting a boycott is not by definition “anti-Semitic or supporting Holocaust denial.” David says I must be wrong, because Pappe is not (in David’s opinion) “pro-Israel” and “pro-Jew.” See how David changed the target? David’s slip - whether David intended it or not - implies that to not be anti-Semitic, one must be pro-Israel; and that not being pro-Israel is the equivalent of being anti-Jew and a Holocaust denier.

My point stands untouched by David’s response. Pappe does not display animus against Jews; nor has Pappe, a Israeli Jewish historian, ever denied the Holocaust. David didn’t even attempt to show any anti-Jewish animus or denial of the Holocaust on Pappe’s part. Indeed, David cannot show any, because none exists.

Faced with an inability to support his argument with logic or evidence, David sidestepped the issue: Pappe is not “pro-Jew” and “pro-Israel,” because Pappe favors a binational solution for Israel and Palestine.

(What is a “binational solution,” you ask? From Wikipedia: “Proponents of a binational solution to the conflict advocate a common state in historic Palestine shared between Jewish and Arab populations. All of the West Bank and Gaza Strip would be annexed to Israel, with their Palestinian Arab inhabitants given citizenship and an equal status to the Jewish and Arab citizens of present-day Israel. The new state would have a secular character rather than being dominated by Judaism or Islam.”)

A lot of people - including Chomsky, incidentally - have argued that a two-state solution (meaning two separate states, Israel and Palestine) is better than a binational solution, and that the dream of a binational state simply won’t work. Regardless, it doesn’t logically follow that believing Jews and Arabs can share a state in peace and harmony - which is what Professor Pappe advocates - means being “anti-Jew.”

Nor does suggesting that Israel should stop being “a Jewish state” make a speaker anti-Jewish. (I don’t think that any state should have an official religion, nor give special legal rights to any group based solely on race, ethnicity, religion, or cultural background [*]; does that make me anti-Islamic and anti-Christian, as well as anti-Jew?)

David’s argument conflates disagreement about Israel with anti-Semitism; he is, to coin a phrase, “defining anti-Semitism down in order to make it a political tool.” If David and others succeed in this task, the effect will be to make it impossible to take “anti-Semitism” seriously; once anti-Semitism just means criticism of the Israeli government, rather than animus against Jews, then what on Earth is wrong with being anti-Semitic?

David continues:

David’s formulation makes sense only if one assumes that society has been static for the last 60 years. But society is not static; David ignores how the growing revulsion and disgust at the Holocaust, in the decades following the Holocaust, led to a widespread rejection of anti-Semitism among many Americans. The fact that the Holocaust happened 60 years ago does not, in and of itself, prove anything one way or the other about US society today.

Is there pervasive and structural anti-Semitism in our society, like there is with racism? Only in the broadest sense: that is, racism exists, and anti-Semitism too exists. But it doesn’t mean that the two are at all the same. The reason progressives of my generation are, by and large, less concerned with U.S anti-Semitism than with racism is because U.S. anti-Semitism is a comparitively minor problem.

Which isn’t to say that anti-Semitism doesn’t exist, or doesn’t matter. I see implicit anti-Semitism (or at least, gentile-centrism) in a lot of anti-New York rhetoric; in the absence of Jewish characters on big and small screen, and in the prejudice against Jewish characters who look and sound like my relatives (which is to say, who are identifiably Jewish); in the way that Jews, although considered suitable for many powerful positions, are - it goes without saying - not viable candidates for President; in the flat-nose blond-hair pale-complexion standard of beauty that still has too much currency in our society; in the mindless belief that Hanukkah is “the Jewish Christmas”; in a dominant religion that says all Jews will burn in Hell, and that’s justice; and so on.

But let’s face it, the harms anti-Semitism has done to my generation of American Jews are generally small. I’ve run into a few anti-Semites (defined as expressing animus towards Jews, or endorsing anti-Semitic myths) in my life, mostly online. I’ve pined for the lack of recognizable Jews on TV and in movies. I have facial features (hook nose, full lips) which, even if I were “acceptably” thin, would prevent me from being considered very handsome. That’s about it.

Let’s contrast that with earlier generations. My father told me that as a kid he was beaten by gangs who were angry to have a Jew in their school. My grandfather was expelled from college for being a communist at a time when “communism” and “Jewish” were considered synonymous. And my grandparent’s generation faced the Holocaust - let’s not forget that even in the US, there were plenty of mainstream, ordinary Americans who thought Hitler had a point about “the Jewish problem.”

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that U.S. anti-Semitism is vastly reduced from what it was.

David wrote that “anti-Semitism is the central issue in the Israel/Palestine debate”[**] - that is, the central reason Western academics criticize Israel is anti-Semitism. David is assuming what is at issue. Putting the particular example of Chomsky aside, at the core of our disagreement is the question of whether or not anti-Semitism is the prime reason lefty academics criticise Israel; David doesn’t prove anything merely by stating his conclusion.

Unfortunately, David doesn’t say much to support his idea that anti-Semitism is central to Western academic criticism of Israel. The only real argument I could make out in his post was a reference to the old “only an anti-Semite would focus criticism on Israel” chestnut, which I think I adequately responded to in this post from 2002.

It’s also worth noting that if you define anti-Semitism to mean animus against Jews and belief in anti-Jewish stereotypes, the least anti-Semitic place in America is a college campus. I wonder how David reconciles that fact with his belief that anti-Semitism runs wild among Western academics who criticize Israel?

* * *

[*] Does that mean I oppose affirmative action? No. Affirmative action is not motivated by racism per se, but by the desire to remove the effects of historic and ongoing racism; just as a surgeon cutting open a stabbing victim is distinct from the criminal who stabbed the victim, affirmative action is distinct from racism.

[**] In a later post, David allowed that Palestinians “on the ground” might consider some other issue - presumably, the human rights of Palestinians - central. David neglects to explain why it’s inconceivable that academics in the U.S. might consider the human rights of Palestinians central, as well.

Over at The Debate Link, David links to a news story about an upcoming conference on the Holocaust, sponsored by the Iranian government. Since the president of Iran has called the Holocaust a “myth,” David quite reasonably predicts that the conference will be an appalling morass of anti-semitism.

So far, so good. David then goes on to say:

My goodness.

David Irving is a flat-out Holocaust denier. But to put Chomsky - or activists who organize a boycott - on the same level as Irving is unsupportable.

The primary evidence linking Chomsky to Holocaust denial is that he once wrote an essay defending the free-speech rights of Robert Faurisson, a Frenchman who has been (justifiably, as it turns out) accused of Holocaust denial and anti-Semitism. Chomsky’s essay was later reprinted, without his knowledge, as the introduction to one of Faurisson’s books.

Nearly all of Chomsky’s essay was a well-worn argument for free speech. A single paragraph addressed Faurisson himself. Here’s the most controversial passage in Chomsky’s introduction:

In retrospect, this is a stupid thing for Chomsky to have written; under the circumstances, if Chomsky wasn’t willing to undertake a thorough review of all of Faurisson’s writings, he should have simply said “I don’t know his work well enough to comment on the matter” and left it at that. Instead, Chomskey concluded from the weakness of the evidence presented to him, that Faurisson probably wasn’t an anti-semite. That conclusion is wrong, I believe, but the error is understandable; there is no need to say “Chomsky supports Holocaust denial” in order to plausibly explain Chomsky’s error.

Chomsky also argued that, in principle, it was possible to doubt the facts of the Holocaust without being motivated by hatred of Jews:

I think Chomsky’s argument here is disingenuous. Logically, he is correct - it is possible for an ignorant schmuck (such as myself, when I was about 17) to take Holocaust denial seriously without hating Jews. But while Holocaust denial is not, in and of itself, absolute proof of anti-semitism, it’s certainly grounds for a very strong suspicion. The real-world association between Holocaust denial and anti-semitism is too obvious to be reasonably ignored.

On the other side of the equation, it is clear that Chomsky does not doubt the existence of the Holocaust. In 1969, he wrote:

Chomsky has returned to this formulation several times, applying it not only to Nazis but to Holocaust deniers. So in 1992, he wrote:

Chomsky does arguably revise history a little - discussing that 1969 comment as if it were referring to Holocaust deniers, rather than to the Nazis themselves - but that’s a little besides the point. Chomsky simply cannot be fairly accused of advocating Holocaust denial. The suggestion that he’d endorse the Iranian conference is unwarranted.

I won’t discuss the British petition to academically boycott two Israeli Universities, which I assume is what David is referring to. Instead, I’ll refer readers to this link; Ilan Pappe’s and Henri Picciotto’s essays demonstrate by example that it is possible to support boycotts and divestment campaigns against Israel without being anti-semitic or supporting Holocaust denial.

Martha Nussbaum has a short-and-excellent essay on disgust in the Chronicle of Higher Education. A sample:

Nussbaum also relates disgust to bigotry: