Today on Fox News Sunday (7-21-13), Chris Wallace, one of the “moderate” voices of the Fox News Channel, noted that just deceased Helen Thomas, who famously exclaimed that “the Jews should get the hell out of Palestine,” was remembered favorably as a gutsy journalist and path breaking [feminist] who put hard questions to American presidents, notwithstanding that outburst. (See this news item indicating support from some “Arab Americans” : http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2010/08/detroit_links_holocause_surviv.html. )
It has been my view that antisemitism and/or hostility to the Jewish state have been consistently underestimated in its effects on politics and on human personalities. For instance, many blacks believe that George Zimmerman, the shooter of the young black man Trayvon Martin, is a Jew. Not much has been made of this astounding belief in the [misnamed] “African-American community,” with the exception of some entries on Facebook. See https://clarespark.com/2013/07/20/obamas-intervention-7-19-13/.
To me, the airbrushing of Helen Thomas, plus the canard that George Zimmerman is a Jew (i.e., the enemy of young black males) suggests that “whiteness studies” or “white skin privilege,” are frequently understood as the rule of the Jews, even though some “whites” deny that Jews are white people. Such are the wages of populism, an ideology that may inhabit every color in the political spectrum.
Here is my index on antisemitism. It has a paragraph at the end that summarizes my view of modern antisemitism. https://clarespark.com/2012/09/29/index-to-blogs-on-antisemitism/. This is the closing paragraph:
It is a misconception to think that a person’s views toward individual Jews tests their antisemitic views one way or another. A-S is above all, a theory of history, most recently a reaction to the “disruptive” effects of modernity, and an identification of the source of Evil. Most or all antisemitism is racist, for no matter how assimilated a person of Jewish descent may be, that person retains mental, physical, and moral attributes attributed to “the Jews” considered as a collective entity. Of these, none is more pernicious than the notion that all “Jews” partake of the Old Testament God as read by non-Jews, most famously by Voltaire (whose admirers were possibly angrier at Christianity, the offshoot of Judaism). That deity is domineering, militaristic, and genocidal, looking out solely for his “Chosen People.” One would think that such a powerful set of misconceptions would be corrected in the schools and in the mass media, but no. For in a highly populated globe, the masses must be controlled, and there is no more potent poison, directing popular anger away from abusive elites, than antisemitism: our innermost desires for truth, for a relatively accurate inventory of our past, is stigmatized as disintegrating to “the family.” So despite occasional hand-wringing over “the Holocaust,” antisemitism is still poorly, even crudely, understood by most, if not all, trained intellectuals. (For a related blog that pits the middle ages against modernity see https://clarespark.com/2012/09/28/bibi-and-the-human-nature-debate/,)
Code Pink supports Helen Thomas
The Clare Spark Blog 
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Pingback by The Myth of Jewish Solidarity | YDS: The Clare Spark Blog — February 25, 2014 @ 8:22 pm |
Your yet another way too brief post omits the looming contradiction of the self-hating leftist Jews. Code Pink, run by Castro groupie Medea Benjamin, is a prime example of the hundreds of anyone-Semitic organizations funded and staffed by Jews.
Comment by C. Tides — July 21, 2013 @ 6:19 pm |
What makes these left-wing “Jews” Jews in your mind? The index to my blogs on anti-Semitism is rich in reference to upwardly-mobile “assimilated” Jews. To label them as “Jews” is to prolong the racist view that persons of Jewish descent remain Jews, no matter how strenuously they try to be acceptable to the dominant culture. At present, the dominant culture is populist-progressive, even in some segments of “the Right.” The paragraph at the bottom of the blog attempts to summarize these thoughts.
Comment by clarelspark — July 21, 2013 @ 6:27 pm |
Very good point but many if not most self identify as Jews and many are clergy, albeit Reform.
Comment by Bob Ennis — July 23, 2013 @ 2:48 pm
Of course they do, but it is a feeble attempt at “identity politics” and the Reform movement was initiated by Jews whose primary identification was with German culture. Excluded from upper-class organizations. clubs, private schools, and hotels, etc., it was a way to establish parallel elite institutions and declare one’s independence from scruffy immigrants from Eastern Europe. Many took to the Ethical Culture movement that promotes multiculturalism.
Comment by clarelspark — July 23, 2013 @ 2:57 pm
You make a good point, but what about the religion’s take on this? According to Halacha, they are still Jews as long as the mother is Jewish. As an extreme example, a former leader of the antisemitic Hungarian Jobbik party was revealed to have a Jewish grandmother. He dropped out of the movement and later asked for forgiveness and acceptance to the local Jewish community. The rabbi looked up the Shulchan Aruch and said that it was his duty to help him integrate him into to the Jewish community. So if the racist view is that “persons of Jewish descent remain Jews, no matter how strenuously they try to be acceptable to the dominant culture”, then ironically enough, that interpretation of Halacha is in congruence with that sentiment. Am I correct?
Comment by JustMe — March 10, 2014 @ 5:35 pm
If you mean to say that Judaism is a religion for Halachic Jews, then you are correct.
Comment by clarelspark — March 10, 2014 @ 6:00 pm