Obama and the Jews

The second piece of depressing news today comes from this article on the Washington Post website - Obama Rebuffs Challenges on His Israel Stance.

It's really infuriating to me that some Jews have started to believe the disgusting rumors passed around about Obama - that he's anti-semitic, anti-Israel, "really" a Muslim who studied in a madrassa in Indonesia, etc. In the debate the other day, Obama did everything he could possibly do to state his support of Israel and his contempt for anti-semitism.

Asked by moderator Tim Russert what he could do to reassure Jewish Americans, Obama cited his belief that Israel's security is "sacrosanct." He also said he has strong support in the Jewish community because of his opposition to anti-Semitism and his efforts to rebuild the relationship between Jews and African Americans.

I found his remarks quite moving, especially when he talked about wanting to rebuild the relationship between Jews and Blacks. It was quite refreshing to hear him talk honestly about the fact that there have been significant tensions between Jews and Blacks over the past several decades. It's this kind of honesty that makes me support Obama.

So why do some Jews so enthusiastically accept Hagee's support, when what he's really hoping for is an apocalyptic war that will kill most Jews in the world, and the same people then denounce Obama for supposedly being anti-Israel? Is there something wrong with their perceptions of reality?

Hagee endorses McCain

Wow, some depressing news today. The first item is John Hagee's endorsement of John McCain for President. (I wrote on Hagee previously - see Hagee).

Hagee's comments about world affairs can make Farrakhan seem pedestrian at times: He eagerly awaits the Armageddon, considers the Catholic Church to be the Anti-Christ, and has said that Jews brought their own persecution upon themselves....

Boy! Anti-semitic and anti-Catholic - a bigotry twofer! It's rare that I find myself agreeing with Bill Donohue, but in this case he's spot on. Here's more on Donohue's objections:

Catholic League President Bill Donohue said in a statement today that Hagee has written extensively in negative ways about the Catholic Church, "calling it 'The Great Whore,' an 'apostate church,' the 'anti-Christ,' and a 'false cult system.'"

Still More on Bill Ayers

This guy really does fascinate me, but I hope my small band of readers isn't getting too bored by my posts about him. It amazes me that he ever managed to become a tenured professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago - a "Distinguished Professor," no less.

I just found a review of his memoir, Fugitive Days, which was published on August 22, 2001, on Slate: Radical Chic Resurgent, which is even more cutting than the New York Times' articles I've been quoting. The review begins: "Chatterbox isn't sure he's ever read a memoir quite so self-indulgent and morally clueless as Fugitive Days."

In a Slate article published on Sept. 19, 2001, Timothy Noah writes:

In the wake of Sept. 11, Chatterbox has developed a morbid fascination with Bill Ayers' foiled publicity campaign for Fugitive Days, his memoir of the Weather Underground. As Chatterbox noted before, Fugitive Days tries to pass off armed rebellion against the United States as a sort of lark. In the book, Ayers maintains that he was not a terrorist because terrorists "kill innocent civilians, while we organized and agitated." Chatterbox demurs. Any group that sets off two dozen bombs, including one at the Pentagon and one at the U.S. Capitol, as the Weather Underground did during the early 1970s, ought to be called a terrorist group. (The Weather Underground doesn't appear to have killed anybody, unless you count the accidental deaths by explosives of a few of its members, but the lack of other casualties seems largely to have been a matter of luck.) Remember, too, that Ayers told his followers, "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at." This earns Ayers at least some spiritual kinship to Osama Bin Laden.

He continues about Ayers' marketing problems for the memoir after September 11:

But the post-Sept. 11 environment poses a significant marketing challenge to Fugitive Days. Accordingly, Beacon Press has announced that it will "suspend promotional activity for this book out of respect for all those who died, their families and friends." Ayers has posted on Beacon Press' Web site a statement denouncing "the barbarism unleashed against innocent human beings last Tuesday" and expressing regret that his book should be published "in a radically changed context ... the temptation for some is to collapse time." In truth, though, the main thing this "changed context" does is remind the public that people who set off bombs run a significant risk of killing other people, even if, in spite of their public pronouncements, they don't really want to kill other people.

Bill Ayers & Ward Churchill

Unsurprisingly, Bill Ayers supported Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado professor who was fired for fraudulent scholarship.

But the spotlight on Churchill revealed numerous complaints of academic misconduct that had been raised by other academics, but never addressed by CU. He was accused of plagiarism, inventing historical incidents and ghostwriting essays which he then cited in his footnotes in support of his own views.

Those allegations were the ones that brought dismissal today.

R.G. Robertson, author of Rotting Face: Smallpox and the American Indian, said he was glad that Churchill's supporters did not sway the regents.

"I'm glad that scholarship, or the ideal of scholarship, won out over somebody's weird view of political correctness," he said. "I'm happy that it happened, that he's been found out, and, by his peers - meaning other university people - and been called what he is, a plagiarizer and a liar."

Robertson's book was among those cited by investigators as having been mischaracterized by Churchill.

"Facts are facts and truth is truth, and when you're dealing with history I think it doesn't need to be distorted by people with a warped political objective," Robertson said.

Another author whose work was mischaracterized by Churchill said the firing was appropriate punishment.

"It's important to know Indian history, and it's important to know factual Indian history, not just a bunch of B.S. that someone made up," said Russell Thornton, a professor at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Churchill attributed assertions that the Army deliberately spread smallpox among Indians to one of Thornton's book's, American Indian Holocaust and Survival: A Population History Since 1492.

Bill Ayers - apologia

I discovered that Bill Ayers has a blog, and scrolling through it just now, I found his apologia for his terrorist actions. He dresses up his violent acts with a lot of warmed over anti-imperialist rhetoric, but it's still a justification for bombings that could have killed innocent people.

Debunking the 60s with Ayers and Dohrn

A very softball interview with Ayers and Dohrn in an issue of In These Times a couple of years ago: Debunking the 60s with Ayers and Dohrn. Of course, there's no mention of the terrorist crimes they were involved in.

Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn

Politico posted a story yesterday on Barack Obama's encounters in Chicago with two radicals from the 60s who are responsible for terrorist acts - Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, who were members of the Weather Underground. My issue is not whether Obama has any serious connection with these two people - I see no evidence of that, and he denounced their terrorist actions through a spokesman for his campaign. What bothers me is how these two people have managed to get away with their crimes with very little or no punishment and subsequently have reached important positions in American academia - both are tenured professors.

Like many of the most extreme figures from the 1960s Ayers and Dohrn are ambiguous figures in American life. They disappeared in 1970, after a bomb — designed to kill army officers in New Jersey — accidentally destroyed a Greenwich Village townhouse, and turned themselves into authorities in 1980. They were never prosecuted for their involvement with the 25 bombings the Weather Underground claimed; charges were dropped because of improper FBI surveillance.

Both have written and spoken at length about their pasts, and today he is an advocate for progressive education and a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago; she’s an associate professor of law at Northwestern University.

But — unlike some other fringe figures of the era — they’re also flatly unrepentant about the bombings they committed in the name of ending the war, defending them on the grounds that they killed no one, except, accidentally, their own members. Dohrn, however, was jailed for less than a year for refusing to testify before a grand jury investigating other Weather Underground members’ robbery of a Brinks truck, in which a guard and two New York State Troopers were killed.

I read about this story about a week ago somewhere else on the web and went to look up Ayers' history. What I found was, frankly, disgusting. In September of 2001, Ayers published a sort of memoir/sort of fictional account of his life, Fugitive Days (Beacon Press). A review of the book/interview with him was published on September 11 (obviously, when it was printed on that day, no one knew what it would forever be remembered for - but it's definitely apposite, considering what he had to say about terrorism). (Read this Clyde Haberman article from September 10, 2002, which is an attempt to replicate how September 11 felt just before the attacks - he refers to the article on Ayers). He is totally unrepentant about the acts of violence he committed. Among other things, this is what the New York Times article said about him:

''I don't regret setting bombs,'' Bill Ayers said. ''I feel we didn't do enough.'' Mr. Ayers, who spent the 1970's as a fugitive in the Weather Underground, was sitting in the kitchen of his big turn-of-the-19th-century stone house in the Hyde Park district of Chicago....

Mr. Ayers is probably safe from prosecution anyway. A spokeswoman for the Justice Department said there was a five-year statute of limitations on Federal crimes except in cases of murder or when a person has been indicted.

Mr. Ayers, who in 1970 was said to have summed up the Weatherman philosophy as: ''Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents, that's where it's really at,'' is today distinguished professor of education [my emphasis] at the University of Illinois at Chicago. And he says he doesn't actually remember suggesting that rich people be killed or that people kill their parents, but ''it's been quoted so many times I'm beginning to think I did,'' he said. ''It was a joke about the distribution of wealth.''

He went underground in 1970, after his girlfriend, Diana Oughton, and two other people were killed when bombs they were making exploded in a Greenwich Village town house. With him in the Weather Underground was Bernardine Dohrn, who was put on the F.B.I.'s 10 Most Wanted List. J. Edgar Hoover called her ''the most dangerous woman in America'' and ''la Pasionara of the Lunatic Left.'' Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn later married.

In his book Mr. Ayers describes the Weathermen descending into a ''whirlpool of violence.''

''Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon,'' he writes. But then comes a disclaimer: ''Even though I didn't actually bomb the Pentagon -- we bombed it, in the sense that Weathermen organized it and claimed it.'' He goes on to provide details about the manufacture of the bomb and how a woman he calls Anna placed the bomb in a restroom. No one was killed or injured, though damage was extensive. Between 1970 and 1974 the Weathermen took responsibility for 12 bombings, Mr. Ayers writes, and also helped spring Timothy Leary (sentenced on marijuana charges) from jail....

So, would Mr. Ayers do it all again, he is asked? ''I don't want to discount the possibility,'' he said.

''I don't think you can understand a single thing we did without understanding the violence of the Vietnam War,'' he said, and the fact that ''the enduring scar of racism was fully in flower.'' Mr. Ayers pointed to Bob Kerrey, former Democratic Senator from Nebraska, who has admitted leading a raid in 1969 in which Vietnamese women and children were killed. ''He committed an act of terrorism,'' Mr. Ayers said. ''I didn't kill innocent people.'' ....

All in all, Mr. Ayers had ''a golden childhood,'' he said, though he did have a love affair with explosives. On July 4, he writes, ''my brothers and I loved everything about the wild displays of noise and color, the flares, the surprising candle bombs, but we trembled mostly for the Big Ones, the loud concussions.''

The love affair seems to have continued into adulthood. Even today, he finds ''a certain eloquence to bombs, a poetry and a pattern from a safe distance,'' he writes.

He attended Lake Forest Academy in Lake Forest, Ill., then the University of Michigan but dropped out to join Students for a Democratic Society.

In 1967 he met Ms. Dohrn in Ann Arbor, Mich. She had a law degree from the University of Chicago and was a magnetic speaker who often wore thigh-high boots and miniskirts. In 1969, after the Manson family murders in Beverly Hills, Ms. Dohrn told an S.D.S. audience: ''Dig it! Manson killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them, then they shoved a fork into a victim's stomach.''

In Chicago recently, Ms. Dohrn said of her remarks: ''It was a joke. We were mocking violence in America. Even in my most inflamed moment I never supported a racist mass murderer.''

Ms. Dohrn, Mr. Ayers and others eventually broke with S.D.S. to form the more radical Weathermen, and in 1969 Ms. Dohrn was arrested and charged with resisting arrest and assaulting a police officer during the Days of Rage protests against the trial of the Chicago Eight -- antiwar militants accused of conspiracy to incite riots at the 1968 Democratic National Convention.

In 1970 came the town house explosion in Greenwich Village. Ms. Dohrn failed to appear in court in the Days of Rage case, and she and Mr. Ayers went underground, though there were no charges against Mr. Ayers. Later that spring the couple were indicted along with others in Federal Court for crossing state lines to incite a riot during the Days of Rage, and following that for ''conspiracy to bomb police stations and government buildings.'' Those charges were dropped in 1974 because of prosecutorial misconduct, including illegal surveillance.

During his fugitive years, Mr. Ayers said, he lived in 15 states....

In the mid-1970's the Weathermen began quarreling. One faction, including Ms. Boudin, wanted to join the Black Liberation Army. Others, including Ms. Dohrn and Mr. Ayers, favored surrendering. Ms. Boudin and Ms. Dohrn had had an intense friendship but broke apart. Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn were purged from the group.

Ms. Dohrn and Mr. Ayers had a son, Zayd, in 1977. After the birth of Malik, in 1980, they decided to surface. Ms. Dohrn pleaded guilty to the original Days of Rage charge, received three years probation and was fined $1,500. The Federal charges against Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn had already been dropped.

Mr. Ayers and Ms. Dohrn tried to persuade Ms. Boudin to surrender because she was pregnant. But she refused, and went on to participate in the Brink's robbery. When she was arrested, Ms. Dohrn and Mr. Ayers volunteered to care for Chesa, then 14 months old, and became his legal guardians.

A few months later Ms. Dohrn was called to testify about the robbery. Ms. Dohrn had not seen Ms. Boudin for a year, she said, and knew nothing of it. Ms. Dohrn was asked to give a handwriting sample, and refused, she said, because the F.B.I. already had one in its possession. ''I felt grand juries were illegal and coercive,'' she said. For refusing to testify, she was jailed for seven months, and she and Mr. Ayers married during a furlough.....

So Ayers didn't regret setting the bombs, nor does he think they did enough. Everything was ideal on the day he set the bomb at the Pentagon. But it's okay, because he didn't actually kill any innocent people. Well, if the bomb that blew up the townhouse in Greenwich Village had actually been used against (and killed) the army officers it was intended for - would that still have been okay because the officers wouldn't have been "innocent"?

On September 16, an interview with Ayers was published in the New York Times magazine. It appears that the magazine had gone to press before September 11, because the interview with him refers in no way to the terrorist attacks on that day. On that same day a letter to the editor from Ayers was published, completely contradicting everything he'd said in the September 11 article. This letter was obviously written after the September 11 attacks. In it he says:

The barbarism unleashed against innocent human beings on Sept. 11 has in an instant transformed the complex landscape of American consciousness. I'm filled with horror and grief for those murdered and harmed, for their families and for all affected forever. ''Fugitive Days,'' the memoir I've written about my participation in the Weather Underground and the antiwar movement and the events of 30 years ago, is now receiving attention in a radically changed context. My book is a condemnation of terrorism in all its forms. We are witnessing crimes against humanity. The intent of my book was and is to understand, to tell the truth and to heal.

Brent Staples then published an excoriating review of Ayers' book (on September 30, 2001, in the Times) which takes apart all of Ayers' rationalizations and refusals to take responsibility for himself.

Kathy Boudin has served 17 years in prison for her role in a 1981 Brink's robbery that left a guard and two police officers dead and nine children fatherless. She received a sentence of 20 years to life, but in most cases an inmate with her record of model behavior could expect parole. Few people were surprised, though, when Boudin was turned down for parole at a widely publicized hearing in August. Prison officials cited the extraordinary violence of the crime. But looming over the case was Boudin's membership in the Weathermen, a spinoff of Students for a Democratic Society. A group of affluent white kids, they played at being revolutionaries during the 1970's and took credit for bombing two dozen public buildings, including the Pentagon. The group was defunct by 1981, when Boudin joined a band of thugs associated with the Black Liberation Army -- an offshoot of the Black Panther Party -- which executed the Brink's truck robbery and, to judge from bomb paraphernalia and plans found after the robbery, seemed ready to blow up several New York City police stations. The robbery made clear the extent to which the student protest movement of the 1960's had deteriorated into naked criminality.

Boudin, at 58, is confronting the possibility of spending the rest of her middle age in prison. But her former comrades Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, members of the Weathermen high command -- once known as the Weatherbureau -- who led the group through its most violent period in the 1970's, have served no significant jail time. Both of them teach at name-brand universities and are headed for cozy retirements like those of the bourgeois parents they so despised during their Weathermen days. Ayers has further cushioned his future by writing a maddeningly evasive memoir, ''Fugitive Days'' -- one of those books that tell by not telling.

The jacket copy is the kind of agitprop that could have been written by the young Ayers himself. In it we learn that ''Bill Ayers was born into privilege,'' and we are given to understand throughout ''Fugitive Days'' that privilege is a crime, if not a badge of shame.... The class guilt drums on and on....

The Weathermen's other great theme was blackness. They fetishized it. Not just any blackness, mind you, but poor, angry blackness that tended toward violence and criminality....

When the Weathermen move underground, he likens the group to ''black Americans who must know everything about the dominant culture while remaining . . . invisible to that culture.'' When the group blows up a building, the act is cast as revenge for the power structure's ruthless attacks on the ''black struggle.'' This affinity, by the way, is what landed Kathy Boudin -- Bryn Mawr graduate and famous lawyer's daughter -- among the criminals who robbed that Brink's truck.

''Fugitive Days'' contains a great many obfuscations. Chief among them is the author's reluctance to mention Boudin. The two had a longstanding acquaintance that probably began in Cleveland during their S.D.S. days. They would certainly have known each other by 1969, when the Weathermen split off from S.D.S. in pursuit of a more perfect radicalism. Years later, after Boudin went to jail for the armored truck robbery, Ayers and Dohrn took custody of her young son, Chesa, who was not yet 2 years old. The absence of Boudin in the book is peculiar, especially since she became famous in the event that forms the emotional center of ''Fugitive Days,'' the explosion that leveled the Greenwich Village town house the Weathermen were using as a bomb factory in 1970. Boudin survived the explosion, walking naked from the wreckage and onto the F.B.I.'s most wanted list. But the blast killed three people, including Ayers's lover, Diana Oughton, who was later identified from a fragment of finger.

Ayers fixates on the explosion.... Ayers sifts and sifts this event, but somehow avoids mentioning Boudin -- even as he recounts meeting with ''two of the comrades who'd come out of the explosion alive,'' one of whom had to have been Boudin.

We can only guess why he fails to mention her. One possibility is that he wished to avoid adverse publicity at a time when Boudin was seeking parole. There is also a more complicated possibility. Ayers wants us to see Oughton as a revolutionary saint who struggled against the Weathermen's bomb-based violence. He imagines that she blew up the town house deliberately, killing her comrades and herself, to prevent the explosives from being used against their targets. The notion that Oughton resisted the group's more violent tendencies is borne out in Lucinda Franks's 1981 New York Times Magazine account of an argument that is said to have consumed the day and the night before the explosion. Franks suggests that Boudin favored using antipersonnel bombs, and that Oughton had misgivings.

The story of Oughton's struggle is poignant, whether or not it's true. But elsewhere in ''Fugitive Days'' the task of choosing among the true, the near true and the untrue is frustrating. Ayers reminds us often that he can't tell everything without endangering people involved in the story. But his partial retelling reaches fraudulence when he writes, ''Everything was absolutely ideal on the day I bombed the Pentagon,'' then backs and fills, saying that he bombed it, not literally but metaphorically, as part of the Weathermen group in charge of the operation. He says that he needed to ''claim'' the explosion in order to write about it, and he adds later that he is not ashamed of any of the bombings and would not rule out planting another bomb someday; ''I can't imagine entirely dismissing the possibility.''

In Ayers's hands, a career in terrorism becomes a harmless episode out of a John le Carré novel, in which our hero lives on the run, steals explosives, sets off explosions using ''tradecraft,'' as the flap copy puts it -- as if the Weathermen were characters in ''Smiley's People.'' But the Weathermen game was never really a game. Nor was it ever noble, or even moral. In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks that killed thousands of people in Lower Manhattan and the Pentagon, readers will find this playacting with violence very difficult to forgive.

And Ayers and Dohrn are still tenured professors in Chicago. Boudin was paroled in 2003. The two police officers are still dead. Oughton is still dead. Why and how Ayers and Dohrn have managed to become rehabilitated in the eyes of some liberals is still astonishing to me.

Cats and gardens

Cat on living room table.

Kevin Drum at The Washington Monthly has some beautiful photos of his cats for Friday catblogging (especially Domino, on the left). But what I'm really jealous of is the photo of his other cat, Inkblot, supervising gardening! Here in Ithaca it's cold, snowy, and icy, and we're beset by the flu. No sign of spring yet. I'd love to be gardening!

So, herewith, some cat photos -


The cat, of course, sitting on my chair.


Another favorite cat spot, when he wants to sit close to me - on the laser printer.


And then when I'm sitting at the computer and he's looking for a warm (although not a soft!) perch - on top of the tuner.

And, then finally, a little bit of green:


My wandering Jew (plant)

Night Photos - Moon Shadow

Last night I went out in the cold to take a look at the lunar eclipse as it was just starting. I managed to get a few photos which look kind of eerie, and also a photo of the house across the street. One of the moon photos looks like it's surrounded by crackly ice.

Merkavah Vision

Through a referrer file, I came across a blog with a cool name - Merkavah Vision. My sometime correspondent Deane appears to be the blog author. Great graphics. How about some comments on Merkavah Mysticism?

Too much Holocaust?

A fine article by Norm Geras - Too much Holocaust, countering an article by Tony Judt that too much attention is being paid to the Holocaust.

Judt's final difficulty, as it had to be in view of what has gone before, is the relation of the Holocaust to arguments about Israel and the Palestinians. It has several components, some of which have already been foreshadowed in what has gone before. (a) Judt deplores the way the Holocaust is invoked to deflect criticism of Israel by the suggestion that such criticism is a stimulus to anti-Semitism or just is anti-Semitism without further ado. (b) In fact, the reverse is true, he says: it is the taboo on criticism of Israel and a too intense focus on the Holocaust that are stimulants to cynicism and anti-Semitism. (c) Relative to other minority groups in the US and Europe, the Jews are not especially stigmatized, threatened or excluded; they are successful, and prominent in many spheres. (d) The Holocaust may 'lose its universal resonance' if it is too closely attached to the defence of a single country; as things are, if you ask outside the West, ask amongst Africans and Asians, what lessons there are from the Shoah, the responses 'are not very reassuring'.

What is striking about these arguments of Judt's is their unqualified, their completely one-sided, character. It is true that the Jewish tragedy in Europe is sometimes misused to justify or excuse Israeli policies that should not be defended. But to say this without noting that there is also anti-Semitic hostility to Israel, in the Arab world and in the West, some of it perfectly overt and some of it more discreet, is to pretend that anti-Semitism is a smaller problem than it is. To lament such misuses of the Holocaust without mentioning the misuses in the opposite direction that equate Israel with the spirit and the methods of the Nazis is to see with only one eye. The same goes for writing as if the most serious sources of anti-Semitism might be arguments used by defenders of Israel or an over-emphasis on the Shoah. Really? This is a centuries-old hatred, and yet here we find ourselves in a situation where it is defence of the Jewish state and memory of the genocide against the Jews that are the stimulants of anti-Semitism; these, at any rate, are Tony Judt's sources of choice.

New Blog: Stuff White People Like

The Stuff White People Like blog is painfully accurate - catch especially the entry on the Prius or on reading the New York Times on Sunday mornings. It's a bit generationally limited - 80s nights certainly don't draw me in - but it hilariously catches the upper middle class leftish white people aesthetic.

Tompkins County in a sea of blue

Stumper, a blog on the Newsweek website, posted a story today (Stumper: Obama Won One New York County) on Obama's win in Tompkins County, that argued for why this win may portend something for future primary states. I don't know if I buy the author's argument, but he reproduced the cool New York Times graphic of the tan Tompkins Country surrounded by grayish blue. And so here it is:

Tompkins County - votes for Obama

I've been following the election tonight (of course), and the state of New York has gone for Clinton (not a big surprise, since she's a very popular senator) - but the only county in the state that went for Obama is where I live, Tompkins County. I'm not particularly surprised - it's likely that we're the most liberal county in the state. Cornell University and Ithaca College are here, as is a large community of people who came here for college and never left, and lots of old hippies who have also never left. It's just highly amusing to look at the county-level map of New York on the New York Times website and see that this is the only Obama county.

When I went to vote this afternoon in the Fall Creek elementary school, there was a long line of people waiting to vote in the Democratic line. This is the first primary I've ever voted in where I actually had to wait to vote. Usually hardly anyone shows up to them. But it was fun to be part of a crowd. And if the voting went according to the lawn signs that have been put up in Fall Creek, more of them were voting for Obama than for Clinton.

We'll just have to see what happens next....

Arun Gandhi apology and resignation

Arun Gandhi has resigned from the peace institute he headed at the University of Rochester.

He issued an apology a few days after his original column -

I am writing to correct some regrettable mis-impressions I have given in my comments on my blog this week. While I stand behind my criticisms of the use of violence by recent Israeli governments -- and I have criticized the governments of the U.S., India and China in much the same way -- I want to correct statements that I made with insufficient care, and that have inflicted unnecessary hurt and caused anger.

I do not believe and should not have implied that the policies of the Israeli government are reflective of the views of all Jewish people. Indeed, many are as concerned as I am by the use of violence for state purposes, by Israel and many other governments.

This is the point that I found most offensive in his remarks - the conflation of the actions of the state of Israel with all Jews, indiscriminately. If he wishes to condemn the actions of Israel, I have no problems with that, and may agree with him in some instances. But on the other hand, even if Jews don't agree with me or with him, that still does not mean that they are guilty of the inciting to violence that he accused us all of.

I do believe that when a people hold on to historic grievances too firmly it can lead to bitterness and the loss of support from those who would be friends. But as I have noted in previous writings, the suffering of the Jewish people, particularly in the Holocaust, was historic in its proportions. While we must strive for a future of peace that rejects violence, it is also important not to forget the past, lest we fail to learn from it. Having learned from it, we can then find the path to peace and rejection of violence through forgiveness.

It is certainly a feature of contemporary American Jewish life that the Holocaust does sometimes become the core of people's Jewish identity - I think that this is damaging to people who do this. How can something as horrific as the Holocaust be the foundation of a positive identity? The Jewish tradition is ancient and rich - this is what we should be learning about and transmitting to the next generation. But unfortunately, it is not possible to ignore the Holocaust and its continuing impact on Jews, even those in the third generation after the events of the Shoah.

I do have a fundamental theological disagreement with Arun Gandhi, about the role of forgiveness. According to traditional Jewish thinking, if someone offends you in some way - injures you physically, steals from you, defames you - then there is no requirement to forgive that person for the offense. If, however, the perpetrator comes to you and asks for forgiveness, and offers compensation for your losses, then it is incumbent upon you to forgive that person. If you refuse to do so, then the Jewish court (beit din) can offer the perpetrator forgiveness on your behalf. But the perpetrator's repentance and compensation are integral parts of the process of forgiveness.

How, then, can Jews forgive the perpetrators of the Holocaust? Those who committed the crimes have not come to the Jewish people either individually or as a group to ask for forgiveness, nor have they offered compensation. Adolf Eichmann had to be dragged out of his hiding place by the Mossad - he didn't turn himself in with statements of regret and remorse. If you watch the movie "Shoah" by Claude Lanzmann, he interviewed utterly unrepentant Nazis.

And then, who is it that has the right to give forgiveness? The millions of dead cannot offer forgiveness, because they are gone. The survivors of the killing? Well, have the perpetrators asked their forgiveness? I haven't heard of any such cases. The children of survivors? They are not the ones who directly suffered at the hands of the Nazis? The Jewish people as a whole? How can we offer forgiveness on behalf of others who might not agree with us?

I think that individual forgiveness can be an important part of engaging in a nonviolent struggle against oppression - by someone who has decided to take on that responsibility. But I don't see how Arun Gandhi or anyone else can ask "the Jews" as a people to grant forgiveness.

We certainly cannot blame Germans who lived after the Second World War of complicity in crimes committed before their birth - but I see no reason to forgive those who destroyed one third of the Jewish people.

Holocaust Memorial Day 2008

Norm Geras has posted several moving comments on Holocaust Memorial Day 2008. See especially what he has to say about Hannah Arendt's idea of the "banality of evil" and about Primo Levi's testimony on Auschwitz. (Today is Holocaust Memorial Day in Europe - on the anniversary of the day that the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp was liberated by the Soviet army in 1945).

Kennedy Plans to Back Obama Over Clinton

This is exciting - Ted Kennedy Plans to Back Obama Over Clinton.

Obama wins South Carolina

Barack Obama appears to have won the South Carolina primary by a sizable margin - 53% to Clinton's 27% and Edwards' 20%. I'm happy to see this because I'm seriously considering voting for him. Hillary Clinton is extremely knowledgeable on many issues - when the whole subprime mess was really beginning to affect the stock market a couple of weeks ago, I heard her speaking on the issues very fluently (and making a lot of sense). But I really like Obama's tone of hopefulness, and the fact that he doesn't bring the Bill Clinton baggage to the race that Hillary does. I haven't liked Bill's recent attacks on Obama at all - they seem quite slimy to me. (See Josh Marshall's discussion of this on Talking Points Memo - The Problem with Bill 2.0).

Oh, and Caroline Kennedy is endorsing Barack Obama (in tomorrow's New York Times). (Of course, she doesn't determine who I'm going to vote for, but I think it's interesting that she's doing so).

Bob Herbert (in today's NYT - Questions for the Clinton) discusses the dubious tactics used by Hillary Clinton's supporters, like Andrew Young and Bob Kerrey (who raised the "Obama is a Muslim" red herring at the same time as he denied doing it!). He ends his column by saying, "What kind of people are the Clintons? What role will Bill Clinton play in a new Clinton White House?" I have the same questions - does Bill Clinton now imagine that he'll be his wife's co-president? Do we want the continuation of another dynasty?

The "Obama is a Muslim" e-mail reached me via a Jewish friend - the text and a thorough rebuttal of all its claims are available at Snopes.com - Who is Barack Obama?. Shortly after I received the e-mail, nine major Jewish organizations issued a public statement denouncing these internet rumors - see 9 Jewish Leaders Say E-Mail Spread Lies About Obama.

The letter was signed by: "William Daroff, vice president of United Jewish Communities; Nathan J. Diament, director of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America; Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League; Richard S. Gordon, president of the American Jewish Congress; David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee; Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center; Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism; Phyllis Snyder, president of the National Council of Jewish Women; and Hadar Susskind, Washington director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs."

CNN on Ron Paul's racism

As I had hoped, the fact that the story about Ron Paul's racism was finally written about in a mainstream media outlet - the New Republic - means that other mainstream media will pick up the story. Today's CNN Politics report includes an article about Ron Paul 90s newsletters rant against blacks, gays. Let's see now what other major media will pick up the story.

(Mahatma) Gandhi and the Jews

Harry's Place has dredged up two of Gandhi's more notorious quotes about the Jews, nonviolence, and the Holocaust (Gandhi's article can be found here: Gandhi). In 1938 he recommended nonviolent resistance against Nazi persecution in Germany, and seemed convinced that if Jews willingly offered their lives, this would result in a moral reformation of the German people.

He was also opposed to Zionism, partially on the grounds that the Jews should prefer to be citizens of the countries where they lived (England, France, Germany) and should fight for their rights in those places. (Obviously at the time this would not have worked in Germany!) He also thought that Zionism was unjust to the Arabs of Palestine. One curious part of his position was that although he opposed the Jewish use of violence in Palestine against Arabs, he did not object to the Arab use of violence against Jews. He says: "I am not defending the Arab excesses. I wish they had chosen the way of non-violence in resisting what they rightly regarded as an unwarrantable encroachment upon their country. But according to the accepted canons of right and wrong, nothing can be said against the Arab resistance in the face of overwhelming odds." It is very curious, in my opinion, that he would so fiercely condemn Jewish use of violence without at the same condemning Arab use of violence. He does not recommend that the Arabs use satyagraha against the British or Jews in Palestine. (The context for this article was the 1936-39 Arab Revolt against British rule and Jewish settlement in Palestine).

In 1939, Martin Buber wrote an open letter to Gandhi offering a rejoinder to his views on Zionism and the situation of the German Jews. (Partial text found at the Jewish Virtual Library - Buber to Gandhi). I found a precis of his letter on the National Review online site:

In a thoughtful personal response dated February 24, 1939, the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber — who had himself emigrated to Israel from Germany a short time earlier and combined his Zionism with earnest efforts to peacefully reconcile Jewish and Arab claims in the Holy Land — chided Gandhi for offering advice to the Jews without any recognition of their real situation. The individual acts of persecution that Indians had suffered in South Africa in the 1890’s hardly compared, Buber noted, to the synagogue burnings and concentration camps instituted by Hitler’s regime. Nor was there any evidence that the many instances in which German Jews peacefully displayed strength of spirit in response to their persecutors had exercised any influence on the latter. While Gandhi exhorted them to bear “testimony” to the world by their conduct, the fate of the Jews in Germany was to experience only an “unobserved martyrdom” without effect.

Turning to Gandhi’s allegation that to claim a homeland in Palestine was inconsistent with the Jews’ claims to equal citizenship in the other countries of their birth, Buber recalled to him that the Indians of South Africa whose cause Gandhi had championed themselves drew sustenance from the existence of India as their “living center.” It was only the existence of such a home that made Diaspora tolerable, respectively (Buber added) for both Jews and Indians.

As for Gandhi’s denial that the Jews had any place in Palestine, since it “belonged” to the resident Arab population, Buber reminded him that the Arabs themselves had previously acquired the land by virtue of a “conquest of settlement” — in contrast to the peaceful methods of the Jews in purchasing land there. Why, indeed, in view of the “primitive” state of Arab agriculture, should Palestinian land be held to belong exclusively to the Arabs, when Jewish settlers had done far more to develop that land’s fertility in the past 50 years than the Arabs in the preceding 1,300? With proper development, there was no reason that the land of Palestine might not support millions of Jewish refugees along with resident Arabs at a far higher standard of living than the latter had heretofore enjoyed. Finally, Buber reminded Gandhi that when the subject was the rights of Indians, as opposed to those of the Jews, Gandhi himself had remarked (in 1922) that he had “repeatedly said that I would have India become free even by violence rather than that she should remain in bondage.”

Arun Gandhi seems to have taken his grandfather's position on Palestine and added to it his own frisson of anti-semitism. I thoroughly disagree with Mahatma Gandhi's pacifism, in the wake of the Holocaust, but at least he did not insult the victims of mass death. However, both Gandhis fall into the same pitfall of excusing the violence of the Palestinians while condemning the Jews or Israelis for using violence to gain their ends. It seems to me that for nonviolence really to have the moral force that is claimed for it, the same demand should be made to both sides - as, for example, Martin Luther King did in the United States.

Note (12-03-12): I will publish further comments on this post, but only if they refrain from excusing Nazism and the Holocaust, or from repeating the witless statement that most Jews in the world today are descendants of the Khazars. This blog does not give a platform to Nazis and antisemites.

Sullivan hearts Ron Paul

Well, it seems that Andrew Sullivan really has drunk the Kool-Aid when he says that he just doesn't believe Ron Paul "wrote those repulsive sentences himself." So then why did he allow them to be published year after year under his name? Why did he sign some of those newsletters? Why does he associate with Christian Reconstructionists? I think that Sullivan is allowing his misguided love for Ron Paul to get in the way of accepting the impressive evidence that Paul held (and still holds) repulsively racist, homophobic, and anti-semitic beliefs and hangs around those who also believe those things.

(Arun) Gandhi and the Jews

Apparently Arun Gandhi, the grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, doesn't understand Jews and the Jewish situation in the contemporary world any more than his grandfather did. Although in the case of Arun Gandhi, he's added a fair dose of anti-semitism. This is my fisking of Gandhi, in an "On Faith" posting on the Washington Post website - Jewish identity in the past.

Jewish identity in the past has been locked into the holocaust experience -- a German burden that the Jews have not been able to shed. It is a very good example of a community can overplay a historic experience to the point that it begins to repulse friends.

Unfortunately, it's a German burden that they placed upon the Jews - it's hard to get away from the murder of six million of your people. I don't believe in shaping Jewish identity around the Holocaust, because it means centering one's identity on death - but there's no way to avoid considering it in thinking about the modern Jewish experience. Here, he seems to be blaming the victim for focusing too much on what the victim has suffered. I'm sorry if that makes people uncomfortable who claim to be "friends" of Jews, but that's too bad for him.

The holocaust was the result of the warped mind of an individual who was able to influence his followers into doing something dreadful.

This is a misconception that I often find among my students - the idea that the Holocaust was the result of the pathologies of Adolf Hitler, as if one man could kill so many millions of people without help from others! It shows a profound ignorance of the historical causation of the Holocaust and how it actually occurred.

But, it seems to me the Jews today not only want the Germans to feel guilty but the whole world must regret what happened to the Jews. The world did feel sorry for the episode but when an individual or a nation refuses to forgive and move on the regret turns into anger.

Why should Jews forgive those who murdered their relatives and ancestors? That doesn't mean holding the post-war generation of Germans guilty of the sins of their parents and grandparents. One of the striking things about modern Germany is the degree to which the country has taken responsibility for the deeds of the Nazi regime and has attempted to make amends. The Israeli government is certainly cognizant of this, as are Jews who have come into contact with new generations of Germans.

Again, Gandhi here seems to be blaming the victim for the anger that "the world" feels because Jews have refused to forgive Germans. I don't think at all that contemporary anti-semitism is due to anger at Jews for refusing to forgive Germans - I think he should be looking instead at the survival of right-wing tendencies in many western nations, and the growth of Nazi-style anti-semitism in the Muslim world in the wake of the creation of the state of Israel. And I say Nazi-style because the Nazis are the source of this anti-semitism. Traditional Muslim anti-Jewish feeling has nothing to do (and has none of the deadly quality) of the anti-semitic ideas that have swept through the Muslim world.

The Jewish identity in the future appears bleak. Any nation that remains anchored to the past is unable to move ahead and, especially a nation that believes its survival can only be ensured by weapons and bombs. In Tel Aviv in 2004 I had the opportunity to speak to some Members of Parliament and Peace activists all of whom argued that the wall and the military build-up was necessary to protect the nation and the people. In other words, I asked, you believe that you can create a snake pit -- with many deadly snakes in it -- and expect to live in the pit secure and alive? What do you mean? they countered. Well, with your superior weapons and armaments and your attitude towards your neighbors would it not be right to say that you are creating a snake pit? How can anyone live peacefully in such an atmosphere? Would it not be better to befriend those who hate you? Can you not reach out and share your technological advancement with your neighbors and build a relationship?

Well, Gandhi is an heir to his grandfather's concepts of peace and nonviolent struggle, so it's not a surprise that he would be arguing against an Israeli military build-up. I agree that Israel should be trying much more to get along with its neighbors - opening up negotiations with the Syrians, for example, and engaging in honest negotation with the Palestinians that includes the willingness to dismantle most of the settlements in the West Bank - but that doesn't mean the Israeli government should refrain from military measures to protect its population as well.

Apparently, in the modern world, so determined to live by the bomb, this is an alien concept. You don't befriend anyone, you dominate them. We have created a culture of violence (and Israel and the Jews are the prime instigators) and that Culture of Violence is eventually going to destroy humanity.

This is the really anti-semitic part of his essay - the idea that "Israel and the Jews" are the prime instigators of the "culture of violence" in the world. Keeping close to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, how about the gunmen of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or the Al-Aksa Brigades who have blown up Israeli civilians - are they not contributors to the "culture of violence"? Or moving to South Asia - how about those in India and Pakistan who developed nuclear weapons for their countries, and the governments that have paid for those weapons and threaten each other with them? I can give many other examples, as I am sure anyone else is to - his obsession with "the Jews" is truly bizarre, and it is this obsession that has turned this struggler for nonviolence into an anti-semite.

Sderot Qassams

Steven Erlanger of the New York Times has finally reported on the Qassam rocket attacks on Sderot. (I usually disagree with those who criticize the NYTimes for being "pro-Palestinian," but I make an exception for Erlanger, who I think does generally favor the Palestinians over the Israelis). His report is quite good, although he does have the obligatory line about the "wretched" life of Palestinians in Gaza. He makes clear how much impact the fear of Qassams has had on those living in Sderot - especially on children. His story highlights why Israelis are so nervous about making concessions to the Palestinians (a point that seems to elude him, however).

Ron Paul takedown

James Kirchick of the New Republic has finally done the research in Ron Paul's newsletters to prove the point that his bigoted associations with neo-Nazis and racists reflect his own views - and have done so for many years. Read the whole article - this is one paragraph I paid particular attention to (on Jews):

The rhetoric when it came to Jews was little better. The newsletters display an obsession with Israel; no other country is mentioned more often in the editions I saw, or with more vitriol. A 1987 issue of Paul's Investment Letter called Israel "an aggressive, national socialist state," and a 1990 newsletter discussed the "tens of thousands of well-placed friends of Israel in all countries who are willing to wok [sic] for the Mossad in their area of expertise." Of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, a newsletter said, "Whether it was a setup by the Israeli Mossad, as a Jewish friend of mine suspects, or was truly a retaliation by the Islamic fundamentalists, matters little."

Kirchick has put onto the New Republic website the text of the Ron Paul newsletters that he quotes from, so it's possible for the reader to judge for herself whether Kirchick has read him correctly.

Ron Paul, Neo-Nazis, Racists, and Evolution

I've been following some of the blogosphere discussion about Ron Paul's connections to the American far right - among others, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and Christian Reconstructionism (not to be confused with Jewish Reconstructionism!), as well as his anti-evolution and crank medicine views.

A few days ago LGF posted a photo of Paul together with Don Black and his son Derek Black ( Ron Paul's Photo-Op with Stormfront) - thanks to Deborah Lipstadt for the reference. Don Black is the owner of Stormfront, a neo-Nazi web site. Don Black has donated $500 to the Ron Paul campaign, and Paul is refusing to give it back.

On Paul's racist statements, see Ron Paul's racism. Paul has been a guest on the radio program of the Council of Conservative Citizens (what the White Citizens Councils turned into) - see The Company Ron Paul Keeps.

Another good blog article, which mentions his connection to Christian Reconstructionist Gary North, is Orcinus. For those who don't know who Gary North is, he's the son-in-law of R. J. Rushdoony, the founder of the movement. See this article by Walter Olson in Reason Magazine on Christian Reconstructionism - Invitation to a Stoning. Gary North was briefly on Paul's congressional staff in the 1970s.

Orac of Respectful Insolence has done a great job of laying out Paul's crank medical beliefs - Ron Paul, Quackery Enabler. Another of the ScienceBlogs crew has posted a video on Paul's rejection of evolution - Ron Paul Rejects Evolution.

What I want to know is why Ron Paul is still considered to have any legitimacy as a Presidential candidate? Why haven't all of these connections been pursued in stories about Paul on NPR, CNN or in the New York Times? Most of the stories I've read or heard about him have mentioned his opposition to the Iraq War, but haven't discussed who his most devoted supporters are, or even alluded to his adherence to the gold standard and opposition to the Federal Reserve Bank - a standard of far-right wing rhetoric. Is it because they simply don't take him seriously? He doesn't have a chance of becoming the next President of the United States - but that doesn't mean that we should ignore his connections to the far right wing.

Photos of Sunnier Days

Since I'm feeling melancholy about the short days, I thought I'd post some nice photos of sunnier days. The first two are of Sodom Pond in Adamant, Vermont - I visited there in late summer this year.

Trees on Sodom Pond

Water lilies on Sodom Pond

This next one is from the fall, going home from Vermont - Lake Champlain.

Lake Champlain

The next one is from Israel - just along the Israel-Lebanon border.

Rekhes ha-Sulam

This one is from the women's section of the Kotel, in Jerusalem.

Praying on a hot day

The last rose blossom of the fall in my garden.

Yellow Rose of Ithaca

End of the Year

Just some thoughts on the ending of the (secular) year.

I was just walking to my local coffee shop (Gimme!) and thinking about how the end of the secular year feels different than the end of the Jewish year. The secular year (at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere) ends in darkness - the days are so short that (here in Ithaca) the sun rises around 7:30 a.m. and sets around 4:30 p.m. Daylight feels like a rare treasure - and an even rarer treasure is a sunny day (Ithaca is in one of the cloudiest regions of the U.S.) Since this is a college town, Ithaca empties out during the break between semesters. My street has a couple of houses occupied by students or recent graduates, and they have disappeared for the vacation. Even the other people have gone away for a few days. On Christmas Day there were hardly any cars on the street. Ithaca was very quiet - hardly any cars passed along the street during the day (which I mostly spent grading exams....) It feels like a melancholy time.

Only if I go to Israel at this time does it feel that I can escape from this melancholy. The days are slightly longer, and there isn't the enormous focus on Christmas that pulls in all the energy in the U.S. And even New Year's Eve isn't a big deal - especially in Jerusalem, where the rabbinate threatens hotels who want to have New Year's parties. They say that they'll pull their kashrut certificates if they observe "Yom Sylvester," which is the Israeli name for the secular New Year (named, according to this Wikipedia article, after Pope Sylvester I, who died in 335 on December 31). I think in the years that I've been in Israel at this time I've only gone to one or two Sylvester parties.

The Jewish New Year, on the other hand, doesn't have the same melancholy associations. The days are getting shorter, but they're still pretty long in Ithaca. Everything's still growing, the flowers are in bloom, and there's lots of good local vegetables in the Farmer's Market. The school year is beginning, so everyone's still hopeful that they're going to get good grades this year. The end of the old year is the month of Elul, which isn't a month to look back over the previous year, but a month to prepare for Rosh Hashanah. One does engage in introspection to prepare for Yom Kippur, which can involve a melancholy focus on one's shortcomings and outright sins against other people - but after Yom Kippur comes Sukkot, which is an unalloyed happy holiday. And in Israel, it often means adorning the sukkah with garish decorations that most Israelis don't realize were actually intended to be Christmas decorations.

So all in all, I prefer Rosh Hashanah to the secular New Year. But on the other hand, we've now started the long process of lengthening the days - it's much too subtle to realize now, but by February the days are palpably longer. (And we need that, since by February we are very tired of winter, and there are still a couple more months of it).

John Strugnell Dies at 77

I just found this out by reading Paleojudaica: John Strugnell Dies at 77; Scholar Undone by His Slur. I studied with Strugnell when I was an undergraduate and a graduate student at Harvard in the 1980s. I took his course on "Intertestamental Literature" when I was a senior, and we spent most of the semester reading 1 Enoch (in the then new Old Testament Pseudepigrapha translation). I wrote a paper for the course on the Apocalypse of Abraham - it was one of the first papers I wrote as a student on ancient Jewish mysticism. As a graduate student, I took the New Testament seminar with him in 1986 or 1987 when the topic was 4QMiqtzat Ma'aseh Torah. It hadn't been published yet - in fact, we were very lucky to be able to study it, as Strugnell was the Dead Sea Scrolls editor who had been entrusted with its publication, and this was still in the days before all of the scrolls were released to be studied by any scholar. I remember going to the AAR/SBL that year and getting into a conversation at breakfast one day with a scholar from another university who asked me if I had a copy of Strugnell's transcription, because he wanted to look at it! When I went to Israel in 1987 for two years, I would periodically go visit Strugnell at the Ecole Biblique and we would talk about ancient Judaism. I wasn't aware of his negative opinions about Judaism until the whole scandal broke in 1990. At some point during these years I was talking to him in his Harvard office and agreed with him that the most interesting parts of ancient Jewish literature were the wierd ones, like the pseudepigrapha or the mystical texts. He was always very helpful to me and I was sad when I heard about his opinions on Judaism. Nonetheless, he had many accomplishments as a scholar, including teaching many undergraduate and graduate students how to read ancient Jewish texts in a careful and analytic manner. Whatever his feelings about Judaism as a religion, it did not affect how he related to me as a Jewish student or how he taught me about ancient Judaism.

Update - This is Jim Davila's encomium of Strugnell, with which I agree - John Strugnell. He says that "many of his friends and students, myself included, signed a statement in his defense which was published in Biblical Archaeology Review in 1991." I also signed this statement.

The "Red One" and Hanukkah

Last night in shul, instead of singing Adon Olam at the end, we sang a couple of stanzas of Maoz Tzur - the first and the last, both of which refer to the Hanukkah story. But in my Birnbaum siddur (Orthodox) there is a fifth stanza (which Birnbaum unhelpfully does not translate, but says that it is later than the rest of the piyyut). I took a look at it tonight trying to figure out what it said. Here's a rough translation:

Reveal your holy arm and bring near the day of salvation.
Enact the revenge of your servants against the evil kingdom.
The time has lengthened, and there is no end to the evil days.
Destroy the red one (Admon) in the deepest shadow,
and establish for us the seven shepherds [Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, Joseph, and David]

The "red one" is a pun on the name Edom (the ancient kingdom, which in rabbinic interpretation referred first to the pagan Roman empire, then to the Christian Roman empire, and then to Christianity as a whole).

(Translation help from the Orthodox Union website - Maoz Tzur).

Useful information on this stanza from Dov Bear A question for my conservative friends. He sees an analogy between the Hellenists denounced in the fourth stanza and modern-day right wing Jews who are trying to get close to evangelical Christians because of their common stance on various social issues like homosexuality or abortion. He said last year:

In 2006 we have our own Hellenizers, men like Daniel Lapin who rejoice at finding common ground between Judaism and the most backwards and least tolerant of Christians. Unfortunately, this common ground is almost always achieved by diluting Judaism. Our positions on abortion or homosexuality or any of the moral issues that animate appeasers like Lapin are richer and more complex and more ambiguous than the Evangelical's absolute 'No.' As readers of the Rabbis are aware our thinking on evolution and the age of the universe is also more accomodating than Christianity's. Samson Rephael Hirsch, for example, was famously flexible about evolution. And the Tiferes Yisroel thought Adam's children married pre-Adamic 'men.'

I just took another look at Lapin's website and found some truly mind-boggling statements by him. Here's one (from the "Ask Rabbi Daniel Lapin" section):

I belong to a messianic congregation and we're learning and following our Jewish roots. There are a few Jews in our congregation, and we often have a Rabbi come to speak. We asked those who were Jewish what [ed. behaviors] they felt Christians do that is most offensive to Jews. The response was the [use of the] symbol of the cross and/or wearing a cross. I wear both a Star of David and a Cross. I never thought I was offending my Jewish brethren. Is not the cross the ‘tav’ in the Hebrew language? Is the cross really offensive? I won't wear my cross if I'm offending my Jewish brethren. Should I get rid of my cross?

The only Jews who might be offended by a cross are those whose Jewish identity is so rootless that their definition of being a Jew is someone who doesn't believe in Jesus or the cross. There is obviously a whole lot more about Judaism and what we DO believe rather than what we are NOT. Many Jews without a strong Jewish foundation in Torah knowledge react to a cross the way a vampire does (or so I'm told) . There is no letter in the Hebrew language that resembles a cross. Sometimes when people say I offended them, it doesn't mean I was really offensive it just means that their skin is too thin. Best wishes RDL

This is a remarkably unhistorical answer to give this undoubtedly well-meaning questioner. Historically speaking, Jews have been wary of the sight of the cross because of Christian Judeophobia. It doesn't have anything to do with whether one's Jewish identity is rootless. In fact, the Jews I've met who are the most wary of Christianity have been Orthodox Jews who won't even enter a church - and these are people who are very well-rooted in Judaism. The thing I don't understand about Lapin is why he works so hard to curry favor with evangelical Christianity (not just evangelical Christians as people he agrees with). It seems to me that it would be sufficient to say that he agrees with them on social issues and that he's willing to be in coalitions with them. It's not necessary then to deny the history of Christian anti-Judaism and claim that Jews who are still aware of it are somehow unJewish.

Mitt Romney and Shatnez

I was just listening to Mitt Romney speaking on NPR (they interviewed him for tonight’s All Things Considered) and he said that he believed that the Bible was the word of God and that his goal was to obey all the commandments. [Why this is relevant to the presidential election is a whole other issue, but let’s take his statements at face value, because the NPR questioner was following up on a question in the most recent Republican debate where the candidates were asked their views on the Bible]. All I could think was – all the commandments? The prohibition of wearing garments made of linen and wool together? The laws of kashrut, including the prohibition of eating pork or shellfish? The commandment to let your fields lie fallow every seven years? The observance of the Sabbath, including the prohibition on kindling fire on the Sabbath? Paying your hired laborer every evening after his or her work is done? Circumcising all your male children on the eighth day after birth?

Somehow, I doubt that he really intended all of these commandments when he said that his goal was to obey them all. I suspect he doesn’t even know about the law of shatnez, and doesn’t particularly worry about whether he eats pork rinds. As a Jew, it drives me crazy when Christians (and in this case he qualifies as a Mormon) say that they believe the entire Bible is the word of God and must be obeyed, since they so definitely don’t obey all of the laws of the Hebrew Bible. Why not just say that? It’s actually part of basic Christian doctrine from the New Testament onward that the ritual commandments don’t apply to Christians. This is what Paul was so exercised about in Galatians. In order for Gentiles to become Christians they did not need to become circumcised or to keep kosher – what they needed was faith in Christ.

And why did he say this in the first place? Especially since he is a Mormon and has other holy scriptures that he follows – the Book of Mormon, another book called the Pearl of Great Price, and perhaps others that I don’t know about. I’ve been reading recently that Mormon doctrine holds that the Bible actually has errors in it – which would mean that in fact he wouldn’t believe that the entire Bible is the word of God. Humans introduced errors into it. Why doesn’t he say that?

I know, it’s obvious why he doesn’t say these things – he’s pandering to the religious right base of the Republican Party. And it’s that religious right that makes it necessary for the presidential candidates to engage in these stupid discussions about what they think about the Bible. I don’t care what they think about the Bible. I care about the policies they would put into practice – what do they think about health care? Iraq? Global warming? Poverty? The rebuilding of New Orleans? The Middle East peace process? Women’s rights? Yes, real issues that are the president’s business.

When the NPR questioner got down to the nitty gritty and asked Romney whether he thought the world was created in six days as it says in Genesis, he backed up and said that with all of the serious problems facing the U.S. and the world, there really wasn’t any point in discussing what portions of the Bible were from God and what they meant. He implied that it was the NPR questioner who had suddenly thought up this question to trip him up – when actually it’s his own party that has gotten itself so entangled in religion that such questions even come up in a presidential debate.

I’m looking forward to hearing what Romney will have to say on the question of faith on Thursday night when he gives his big speech – JFK redux. Except, of course, that he won’t be able to say all the great things that Kennedy said about the separation of church and state, because if he does, he will have lost the religious right of his party, which is necessary for his nomination. Nor will he be able to speak honestly about his own Mormonism, for the same reason, since he needs to blur the differences between Mormonism and evangelical Christianity in order to have any chance of getting a significant percentage of the evangelical vote.

Hate Crime Victims - Jews & Muslims

The FBI has put up on its website all of the Hate Crime Statistics reports since 1996. I took a look at all of them for the purpose of comparing the hate crimes reported against Jews and Muslims over that time period, and discovered that there is a big change in the number of crimes against Muslims in 2001 - which is no surprise. I assume that most of them were committed after the 9/11/01 attacks. The level of hate crimes against Muslims drops in subsequent years, but remains higher than the pre-2001 rate.

Because I can't figure out how to put a table into this posting, I'll give the statistics this way:

For the entire period of 1996-2006, the average number of crimes against persons (Jews) was 408, with the highest year being 2002 (485). The largest number by far of such crimes were intimidation, followed by simple assault and then aggravated assault.

For this same period, the average number of crimes against property (Jewish) was 684, with the highest being 775 in 1996. The largest number by far of such crimes were damage/destruction/vandalism.

For Muslims over the same period, I've broken it down into pre-2001 and post-2001 periods. Pre-2001, the average number of crimes against persons (Muslims) was 19. Against Muslim property it was 11.4.

Post-2001, the average number of crimes against persons (Muslims) was 153, with the highest year being 2001, with 389. Of those, 296 were intimidation, 27 were aggravated assault, and 66 were simple assault. Post 2001, the average number of crimes against property (Muslim) was 79, with the highest figure also being in 2001, with 155.

From a comparison of these statistics we can see that in all of these years, numbers of property crimes against Jews exceeded crimes against persons (Jews) by 63% to 37%. For Muslims pre-2001, the ratio was the opposite: property crime was 37%, crimes against persons was 63%. Post-2001 the ratio is almost the same: 66% against persons, 34% against property.

More on hate crime statistics

Arash Kamangir has some good questions on his blog about the latest FBI statistics. He pointed out that to make a true comparison between anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hate crimes, we would have to scale the results by population.

Wikipedia provides a useful survey of population estimates for American Jews, ranging from about 6.4 to 7.4 million according to the latest surveys.

It is harder to figure out how many American Muslims there are. One estimate, which I found on the "Islam 101" website estimates that as of 1991 there were between 5 and 8 million Muslims in the U.S.

The Religious Tolerance website provides estimates from several surveys. The numbers range from about 1.6 million to 12 million. The first four estimates, which are based on survey research, range up to a high of 2 million - as of 2000/2001.

An interesting article by Jane I. Smith on the U.S. State Department website gives estimates of from 2 million to 7 million. Smith is a well-respected scholar of Islamic studies who teaches at Hartford Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut. She remarks:

It is very difficult to estimate the precise number of Muslims currently living in the United States. Muslims tend to put the number somewhat higher than non-Muslim scholars and demographers; the estimated figures range widely - from around two million in one study to as many as seven million. There are several reasons for the varying estimates. First, because the U.S. Constitution mandates a separation of church and state that is reflected in American law, U.S. Census Bureau survey forms do not ask recipients about their religion. Neither does the U.S. Immigration Service collect information on the religion of immigrants. Many mosques in the United States do not have formal membership policies, and they seldom keep accurate attendance figures. In the words of University of Chicago religion scholar Martin Marty, "Counting noses has come to depend on two sources. One source is poll-takers calling during the dinner hour to ask, `What is your religious preference?' The other source is religious leaders, on both the local and the national scene. People who respond to telephone interviewers may have all kinds of motives for declaring themselves as part of this or that group, or no group at all. And people who report on the size of their congregations, denominations, and cohorts also have a variety of motives." The end result is that there is no official count of Muslims in the United States nor is there a number that is commonly accepted by all who have studied the question.

When I originally wrote, I had the higher estimates of Muslim population in the U.S. in mind - about 6 million in fact - so I thought that the comparative figures for Jews and Muslims victimized by hate crimes were roughly proportional by population, thus meaning that Jews were victimized more by hate crimes than Muslims. However, if we compare the lower estimates of Jewish population (6.4 million) with the lower estimate of Muslim population (2 million), then we get a different picture, as Arash points out.

And the hate crime statistics are not the only way to measure prejudice. Another way is to measure whether people would vote for a person of a particular religion. In a 2006 poll done by Rasmussen Reports, 61% of likely voters said that they would not vote for a Muslim candidate. 43% said that they would not vote for a Mormon candidate. 60% said they would not vote for an atheist. Unfortunately, this poll didn't ask about Jewish candidates.

The latest ADL poll on anti-semitic attitudes shows that 15% of the American population holds strongly anti-semitic beliefs. A 1999 Gallup poll reported that only 6% would refuse to vote for a Jewish candidate for President.

2006 Hate Crime Statistics

The FBI has released the report on 2006 Hate Crime Statistics, and it is very interesting to examine those hate crimes based on the religious identity of the victim. Of the 9080 hate crimes, 1597 were motivated by religion, and of those 1027 were anti-Jewish (64% of crimes based on religion of victim; 11% of total hate crimes). 191 were anti-Muslim (11%; 2% of total hate crimes).

Specific crimes against persons:

aggravated assault
anti-Jewish: 22
anti-Muslim: 24

simple assault
anti-Jewish: 58
anti-Muslim: 30

intimidation
anti-Jewish: 244
anti-Muslim: 79

Specific crimes against property:

robbery
anti-Jewish: 1
anti-Muslim: 1

larceny-theft
anti-Jewish: 13
anti-Muslim: 0

destruction/damage/vandalism
anti-Jewish: 672
anti-Muslim: 51

Thus, in the most serious category of crimes against persons (aggravated assault), the number of anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim offenses is almost identical, but in all other categories, especially intimidation and destruction/damage/vandalism, the number of incidents directed against Jews is far larger. It strikes me that these figures belie the claim that Islamophobia is a much greater danger than anti-semitism in the United States. If that were true, it would mean that far more Muslims than Jews would be victims of hate crimes.

Of all groups in the American population, blacks are the group with the highest number of hate crimes against them: 3136 (34%), then whites (1008; 11%), then Jews (11%), then gay men (881; 10%), and then Hispanics (770; 8%). From these statistics, we can see that the hatreds rampant in the United States are really the old tried and true ones - anti-black racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiments.

Update:

I was just looking again at the FBI statistics - they are by no means complete, because some cities and states have no reporting of hate crimes. Look, for example, at the state of Alabama. There is only one hate crime reported for the entire state for 2006. For comparison, compare the reporting for New Jersey: a total of 759 hate crimes. There are no statistics whatsoever for Mississippi, for another example. According to the FBI website, however, the agencies reporting on hate crimes in their jurisdictions represent 85% of the U.S. population (255 million people).

Jerusalem on Google Earth

Some more Google Earth images. The first one is of the neighborhood I've lived in Jerusalem - Emek Refaim. The second is of the Old City - you can see the Temple Mount and the Dome of the Rock on the right hand side of the photo.

Google Earth image - Liepaja

I was using Google Earth yesterday and found the city of Liepaja, Latvia - I was trying to find the street (Barena iela) that my grandfather's uncle and aunt had lived on before the Nazi invasion in 1941. I wasn't able to find it - perhaps it's too small a street to be marked on the map yet - but I did wander around Liepaja (virtually). And then today I discovered that it's possible to save a JPEG of Google Earth images. I've got a shot of a residential area of Liepaja from the air.



North of the city, along the sea, is a memorial to the Jews murdered at the Skede dunes in December of 1941 (likely including my grandfather's aunt). This is is the location of the dunes.



And go to this photo to see picture of the memorial itself.

Rita Bogdanova has written a moving memoir of her return to Liepaja after so many years. It includes a photo of the Skede dunes.

Brian Friedman wrote an account of what happened at the killing fields of Skede (warning - graphic photographs) as well as about his visit to Liepaja and attendance at the dedication of the Skede memorial in 2005. He also has more pictures of the dunes and of the memorial itself.

House Approves Ban on Anti-Gay Discrimination

When I was at the gym earlier today I was watching CNN and they were reporting something about the House bill to ban anti-gay discrimination in employment - but I didn't realize that the House had passed the bill today, 235-184. It now goes to the Senate, where it will also hopefully pass.

House Approves Ban on Anti-Gay Discrimination - New York Times: "The House approved a bill this evening granting broad protections against discrimination in the workplace for gay men, lesbians and bisexuals, a measure that supporters praised as the most important civil rights legislation since the adoption of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990 but that opponents said would result in unnecessary lawsuits."

Pretty amazing. I remember in the mid-1970s that when the first open lesbian, Elaine Noble, was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives, she received a great deal of abuse on the floor of the House from other representatives. Noble said in a recent interview that once she was elected, "It really got harder in terms of the threats and being a target that was readily available to people." It is quite astonishing how far we have come in thirty years.

Reply to McGowan

The The Ithaca Journal just published my letter in reply to McGowan, I'm happy to say.

Those who call themselves “Holocaust revisionists” do not make use of the accepted canons of historical research and analysis — they distort physical evidence (for example, by claiming that the gas chambers at Auschwitz were not used for the murder of human beings) and misuse documentary evidence (for example, by misquoting sources or using partial quotations of German documents that refer to the mass murders of Jews). It is thus very appropriate to call them deniers and not mere “revisionists.”

“Revisionist conclusions are despised” not because they contradict the “Holocaust story” but because they are false and tendentious misreadings of history. Those who engage in such “revisionism” are motivated by virulent anti-semitism, as one can tell by inspecting the Web sites of Holocaust deniers such as Ernst Zundel or the Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust. Hidden behind the letter's anti-Israel claims is a typical anti-semitic contention — that unchecked Jewish power forced the U.S. to invade Iraq. This letter deserves to be dismissed by the intelligent readers of The Ithaca Journal.

It's satisfying to see my response to his nonsense in print.