One good way to avoid charges of anti-Semitism when you write about Jewish politics is to rethink using language like "not good for the Jews," or "it does not help American Jews."
Help us from what - the threat of persecution? You can see what I am getting at. There is a history to this kind of discourse that's loaded with prejudicial assumptions about Jews living under the threat of punishment for what we do and what we say.
Why not just write that its morally unacceptable, in your view, that a community which you correctly identify as having strong anti-war views concerning Iraq would then go ahead and support military intervention in Sudan? Simple, and it relieves your discourse about such subjects of any imbrication with left-wing anti-semitism.
Joel
On May 3, 2006, at 8:25 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
> On 5/3/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>> Max B. Sawicky wrote:
>>
>> >There is something off-putting about a member of one ethnic group
>> >classifying others according to positive and negative traits.
>>
>> If you want to say, the leaders of social group X are allying with
>> the higher circles of power in the US to promote policy Y, of which
>> you don't approve, do you have to be a member of social group X to
>> make that point, even if you do so without any trace of prejudice?
>> Wouldn't it make it very difficult to do social or political analysis
>> if you followed this rule?
>
> Just found this:
>
> <blockquote>Republican chairman booed at AJCommittee event
> The chairman of the Republican Party was booed at an American Jewish
> Committee event over comments on Iraq.
>
> Ken Mehlman, who is Jewish, said Iraq posed less of a challenge now
> than under Saddam Hussein.
>
> Mehlman was otherwise politely received when he spoke Tuesday at the
> AJCommittee's 100th anniversary celebrations in Washington, and he got
> warm applause when he said the Bush administration would not tolerate
> an Iranian nuclear bomb and always would stand by Israel.
>
> The room burst into applause, however, when AJCommittee board member
> Edith Everett asked Mehlman to "take a message" to President Bush to
> stop linking Israel and Iran.
>
> "It does not help Israel and it does not help American Jews to appear
> to be stimulators of any action against Iran," Everett said.
>
> (May 2, 2006, <http://jta.org/page_view_breaking_story.asp?
> intid=2450>)</blockquote>
>
> Now, if it doesn't help American Jews to "appear to be stimulators of
> any action against Iran," isn't it worse for establishment Jews to be
> _actually_ stimulating an action on Sudan, when they have no control
> whatsoever over what Bush actually do, against the interests of Jewish
> communities?
>
> On 5/3/06, Jim Farmelant <farmelantj at juno.com> wrote:
>> It may be the case that the "bad politics of the organizers"
>> is best explained without reference to religion. However,
>> that certainly doesn't stop those very same organizers from
>> exploiting
>> appeals to ethnic and religious solidarity to enforce
>> political conformity on certain issues.
>
> If the "Save Darfur" rally had been entirely or chiefly organized by
> evangelicals, it would have been simply laughable. It's Jewish
> historical experience -- namely the Holocaust -- that lends moral
> capital to evangelicals and Bush. Lending that moral capital to the
> Empire is what Eli Wiesel does professionally: e.g.,
> <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/dunbarortiz121005.html>.
>
> --
> Yoshie
> <http://montages.blogspot.com/>
> <http://mrzine.org>
> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
>
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