[lbo-talk] Dealing with the 'new anti-semitism'

Joel Schalit managingeditor at tikkun.org
Sun Sep 3 12:46:26 PDT 2006


Actually Joanna, there is a point to be made here, irrespective of what your opinions are about Angelus' motivation for his positions are, which I think Doug summed up well. Its one that tends to get passed over - particularly in terms of discussions of the racism of Israeli state policies towards Arabs in the territories, and in regards to Arab citizens of Israel proper. It flies in the face of official Israel discourses about the monocultural identity of Israel too, which in its very formulation, is in denial of the cultural makeup of Israeli society.

Israel has over a million Arab citizens, who are functionally, and to a lesser extent substantively, discriminated against by Israeli law. Israel's own Jewish population can hardly be described as monocultural too. Unlike the Diaspora Jewish community in the US - from which American progressives largely derive their ideas about Israeli Jewish cultural identity, and conversely that of Israel - the Israeli Jewish population is radically multicultural - Ethiopian, Iranian, Moroccan, Iraqi, Algerian, eastern European, American, Western European etc.

What Zionist discourses about desiring a monocultural Jewish society in Israel conceal is that there is no such thing as a Jewish monoculture, in Israel, or anywhere else for that matter. What does prevail in Israel is a largely Ashkenazi (read central European, for our purposes) official state culture, which conceals (or buries) a radically multicultural society amongst the country's Jewish population, in addition to its Arab (Christian, Muslim, Druze) and Circassian populations, let alone all of the non-Jewish immigrant workers from Asia and Eastern Europe who've settled in the country.

Best, Joel

On Sep 3, 2006, at 10:31 AM, joanna wrote:


>
>
> Angelus Novus wrote:
>> Is Israel mono-cultural and mono-religious? As I
>> understand, there are substantial Arab and Druze
>> minorities.
>
>
> I can draw only one conclusion from the thread of your arguments: you
> are a zionist and not a very honest one at that.
>
> Joanna
>>
>
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk



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