paranoid Jews? (was: RE: Michael Lerner bashing)

[Max Sawicky]

> >no, but informed Jews know that the same could have
> >been said about German Jews before Hitler.
> >That little fact is hard to escape.
>
> WEll, that would hold only if Jews were persecuted simply because
> they were
> Jews (or that Blacks are now disadvantaged simply because of their skin
> color), and not because of the place they occupied in a society that
> persecuted them.

That's like saying John Wilkes Booth didn't shoot
Lincoln because of he was president, but because he
happened to be taking in a play at Ford's Theater.


>
> To be a systematically persecuted minority, a group has to meet two
> necessary 'structural' conditions: it has to be sufficiently visible as an
> indentifiable collective entity that is separate from the society in which
> they live, and it has to be vulnerable to repression, that is, no state
> that will defend that group if another state persecutes it or, if that
> defence fails, accepts its members as full citizens (rather than
> refugees). .  .  .

Why is the group not vulnerable to persecution merely
because they have a state of their own somewhere else?
Groups throughout the world who have separated from their
state (even very powerful ones, e.g., China) are persecuted
as outsiders in the place of their residence.

Cheers,
MBS