anti-semitism

The odds were 10:3. A mob, one of whom had been involved with racist attacks on blacks in the past, attacked three Jews for having the NERVE to wish them "Happy Hanukkah" in response to "Merry Christmas." This occurred on the NYC subway, well within a part of the world considered more or less free of such stupid bigotry. But the ten bigots who mobbed the Jews for wishing them "Happy Hanukkah" included a woman who was the perfect illustration of the stupidity such bigots embrace when she referred to Hanukkah as the day Jews celebrate the killing of Christ.

Hanukkah, of course, pre-dated the birth of Christ by some 200 years, and represented the success of Jewish rebellion against the Syrian Greeks.

When the odds are 10:3, a hero jumps in to defend the 3. That is what Hassan Askari did. Hassan Askari was a gentleman from a Bangladeshi family who jumped in to defend the three Jews against the ten ignorant bigots who attacked them. He received a possible broken nose in the process, but is also being honored by New York City as a genuine good Samaritan.

Hassan Askari shows us all the right thing to do. I believe many of use would do the same if we were there and our reaction time quick enough. But he DID it, without thinking, and in turn bore the brunt of the anger of the bigots. For that he represents the heroic side of all of us, and I join in the many people who are embarassing with the title of "hero."

Reporting on this a bit late...this happened a week ago, but slipped my mind until reminded of it by an email from the Anti-Defamation League

According to the FBI, hate crimes are on the rise again, up nearly 8% in 2006. This month a particularly nasty group of bigots in New York City attacked four Jews on the subway because those Jews had the unmittigated NERVE to say "Happy Hanukkah."

From Haaretz:

On [December 7th], Four Jewish subway riders who wished other people Happy Hanukkah were pelted with anti-Semitic remarks before being beaten, New York police and prosecutors said.

The incident was being investigated as a possible hate crime.

The four were on a train in Manhattan on Friday night, during the eight-day Jewish Festival of Lights, when they were approached by a group of 10 people who offered holiday greetings. The victims responded, Happy Hanukkah and were assaulted by the larger group, police said Tuesday.

Police caught up with the train in Brooklyn and arrested eight men and two women, aged 19 and 20. They were arraigned Saturday on charges of assault, menacing, riot, harassment and disorderly conduct, the Brooklyn district attorney's office said.

The case was being handled by the office's civil rights bureau, and charges could be upgraded to hate crimes, prosecutors said. The two men and two women who were attacked had bruises and welts on their faces and heads but were not hospitalized, police said.

I didn't know this but last week was self-proclaimed "Islamo-facism awareness week," a right wing intolerance fest dreamed up by extremists Ann Coulter and David Horowitz. I only know that these fools were strutting around advocating intolerance because of an email I got from the organization Jews on First.

There is something so disgusting about the right wing fear of just about everything that isn't white, male, Protestant Christian. Ann Coulter is the perfect example of this. When we hear her condemning so-called Islamo-fascism, let's remember that she is the idiot who said right after 9/11 that:

"We should invade their [Muslim's] countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

And what did she choose to advocate during her "Islamo-facism awareness week?" Anti-Semitism. Yes, she attacks Jews as part of her paranoia against Islam. Last week she told Donny Deutsch:

"we should throw Judaism away and we should all be Christians."

Ann Coulter also claimed that Christians want Jews "to be perfected" by converting to Christianity.

When she was challenged about how bat-shit crazy and offensive this was, she "explained:"

"No. I'm sorry. It is not intended to be. I don't think you should take it that way, but that is what Christians consider themselves: perfected Jews. We believe the Old Testament. As you know from the Old Testament, God was constantly getting fed up with humans for not being able to live up to all the laws. What Christians believe -- this is just a statement of what the New Testament is -- is that that's why Christ came and died for our sins. Christians believe the Old Testament. You don't believe our testament." Coulter later said: "We consider ourselves perfected Christians. For me to say that for you to become a Christian is to become a perfected Christian is not offensive at all."

A reader sent me this some time ago, but never got around to writing about it. Now it seems that the military is trying to queitly sweep it under the carpet, but the group Jews on First, the organization that broke the story about the Delaware Pogrom, has taken up the issue.

It seems that chaplains at Ft. Levinworth were giving lessons with anti-Semitic messages. And this is where our tax money is going!

Truthout ran the story a few days ago.

At the Fort Leavenworth, Kansas Army base, military chaplains have been holding Bible classes for US soldiers using study guides that appear to be anti-Semitic.

The Fort Leavenworth chaplains have posted these lesson plans on the Internet under a web address that is maintained by the federal government, giving off the appearance that the religious materials in question are endorsed by the Pentagon. Moreover, disseminating the ideology via a government funded web site may violate the law mandating the separation between church and state.

The nonprofit watchdog group, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an organization that seeks to enforce the law mandating the separation between church and state in the US military, discovered the documents late last week. The anti-Semitic materials are posted as PDF files at the web site, Command Chaplain Bible Studies, which is maintained by the US Army's Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth.

One thing that is sure to get your ass banned from Culture Kitchen is hate speech. Not only is it disgusting and contrary to our policies, but it is also pathetic and labels you as a complete and total loser.

We just had a Nazi anti-Semite come and post some crap about Jews and Jewish conspiracies. Sadly, in the process he used a book that is perfectly innocent of his intolerance yet is too easily used by people with small minds for a purpose its author never intended. The Thirteenth Tribe, by Koestler (a Hungarian who was, like me, a borderline atheist, moderately Zionist Jew). This was a very interesting and speculative book that suggests that the kingdom of the Khazars, the ruling elite of which had converted to Judaism, is one of the origins of Ashkenazi Jews. It is an outdated and largely disproven hypothesis that is nevertheless well worth a read. But narrow-minded Nazi sympathizers use it to claim that Jews do not have ancient roots but are, rather, merely Europeans with no link to the Middle East. The evidence for a Middle Eastern link for Jews is overwhelming, and, in a huge irony, points to a common origin for both Jews and Palestinians. Extremist Jews and extremist Palestinians tend to deny each other's validity, despite this clearly common origin.

But that isn't even my point. My point is, Nazism, racism, anti-Semitism and pretty much every kind of hate speech is nothing but a disgusting sign of deep insecurities. I consider the use of hate speech to be symptomatic of a very small intelligence, a small penis, or some other deep deficiency that a person cannot face up to, so has to create a myth of superiority that requires the denigration of others. A person with a modicum of intelligence and self-confidence can cope with their deficiencies and live happy, productive lives despite whatever problems or handicaps they might have. But some people cannot face the fact that they aren't some kind of super-person, and, in a perpetuation of adolescent self-importance, has to believe that they are always right and anyone who is different from them must be sub-human.

“We are Jewish because there are people out there who would kill us for being Jewish.”

At a time when I was simultaneously becoming more agnostic/atheist and more Jewish (perhaps in the tradition of Isaac Deutcher who recognized a place within Judaism for non-believing Jews), I quite naturally posed the age old question of just what it means to be a Jew. Parts of my quest to answer this question for myself have become diaries on various blogs. Genetic, cultural, tribal, religious, nationalistic and historical definitions of Judaism all combine into a mish mash that must be confusing to non-Jews but that I have come to see as a very key aspect to Jewish identity. I have come to see this identity crisis as a core part of Judaism that goes back as far as we can trace.

That’s how I think. Immerse in the complexity and maybe even add to that complexity with some paradoxes: atheists can be perfectly good Jews, identity crisis can be a defining feature of identity, etc.

My wife thinks differently than I. And her response to the question of Jewish identity was characteristically terse and to the point:

“We are Jewish because there are people out there who would kill us for being Jewish.”

I think one reason why this occurred to my wife is thanks to a visit we made to Eastern Europe. In both Latvia and Russia we found that people immediately spotted us as Jews. We never got that feeling in America or Israel. In both America and Israel we were seen as Americans, period. Should we wish to indicate our Jewishness we could, but no one spotted us from a distance and categorized us as Jews. In Latvia and Russia, the recognition was immediate. Sometimes it was matter of fact. On a night train from Latvia to Moscow, a route with few tourists, the woman who checked our tickets look at my wife’s name and first asked if we were Polish. We said no. Her next guess was Israeli. As far as I know nothing about us suggests Israeli, but that was her second guess. Only on her third guess did she pick American. But that was trivial. She was friendly and kind through the entire ride.

Did you know that the vast majority of anti-Semitic libels, including accusations of disloyalty and the infamous blood libel, go all the way back to the Roman Empire. Of course Jews were slaughtered and attacked way before Romans became experts at it, but ancient nations like Babylonia and Assyria and Egypt were simply treating Jews the same way they treated everyone: conquest, slavery, high taxes...

Remember that the very, very first historical reference to "Israel" was an Egyptian boast by Merneptah that the people of Israel had been completely destroyed, leaving no offspring. But this boast was included in a long list of destroyed people.

Romans, as far as history tells us, were the first to villify Jews as they killed them. It was no longer a matter of bullying everyone. Jews were singled out in particular.

Apion (1st century BC) gave us the earliest version of the blood libel. The Roman historian Tacitus gave us the suspicion that Jews could never be loyal to their host nation and hence were always under suspicion. Cicero, Seneca and Plutarch all added to the earliest history of intellectual anti-Semitism.

Natrually the Spanish Inquisition, operating throughout Spanish and Portuguese territories, took anti-Semitism to new lows. Until the 1930's, with all due respect to modern Catholics, Catholics were the most rabid Jew-haters in history. Of course Hitler and the Nazis finally took that title.

This is the Catholic patriarch that wants to take down the John Edwards campaign with Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan in tow.

Extra treat? The religious right of America

Prejudice: Rehab Won't Solve The Problem, Washington, Gibson And Richards Apologized, But Racism Remains - The ShowBuzz:

It's a little soon to determine how their outbursts will affect them in the long run. But so far Richards' career was nowhere to begin with so he can only go up, Mel Gibson bounced back with "Apocalypto," and Isaiah Washington hasn't been discharged from "Grey's Anatomy." Yet.

Unfortunately, it's too easy to vilify these three stooges for their public outbursts and ignore the fact that racism, homophobia and anti-Semitism remain a real problem in our society.

I do have to say that the United States has come a long way when ethnic whites and black Americans can come together in their bigotry and express with so much gusto the diversity of prejudice we harbor in this country.

At least it is not just one group of people against another. No, it's more like a clusterf0ck of hate.

Hate that gets a slap on the wrist and a tap on the back after the haters 'repent' and announce their sabbatical at a 'rehab' center.

W. T. F.

Kudos to Judy for inspiring the title. Now go and read her whole entry at the Showbuzz.