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Jewish identity in a pickle: Affirming non- and anti-Zionist Jewish people at McGill Written by: McGill Students’ Chapter of Independent Jewish Voices and published by The McGill Daily on February 17, 2017.

Link:

https://www.mcgilldaily.com/2017/02/jewish-identity-in-a-pickle/

 

Israel Lobby's War On Boycott Movement Distracts From Reality by Tyler Levitan Campaigns Coordinator for Independent Jewish Voices - Canada

Tyler Levitan

Campaigns Coordinator for Independent Jewish Voices - Canada

 

Israel Lobby's War On Boycott Movement Distracts From Reality

 

 

In recent months, the Israel lobby and its allies in Canada's political establishment have waged a full-fledged assault on the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. This culminated in the anti-BDS motion that passed with enormous support in the House of Commons.

What is the purpose of this massive mobilization of resources against a non-violent civil society movement? Shimon Fogel, CEO of the Israel lobby group Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs (CIJA)--a major proponent of this anti-BDS motion-- claims that BDS has been an "absolute failure" (22:42) at pressuring Israel economically.

Yet BDS has been cited as a primary cause for the nearly 50% drop in Foreign Direct Investment into Israel in 2015. And, more importantly, BDS challenges Israel's dominant narrative, which has been a fixture of Western societies for generations. Israel lobby groups see that this threatens the way Canadians view this issue.

In a recent HuffPost commentary, Fogel chose to lambaste Palestinians' right of return in an apparent effort to justify the government's censure of Canadians who support BDS. Fogel denied both that Palestinians are entitled to this right, and that Canada supports it officially.

Not only is the Palestinian right of return to their homes and properties enshrined innumerous bodies of international law, but Canada's official policy is that concerned parties must come to a solution that "should respect the rights of the refugees, in accordance with international law."

How can Fogel claim so boldly that Palestinians -- those who were born in current-day Israel or whose parents and grandparents were born there, and whose ancestors lived there for countless generations-- should be forbidden to ever return, while a Jewish person who may have no familial connection to the land should be granted automatic citizenship? Fogel claims "a 'return' of these refugees ... would demographically overwhelm Israel, destroy the Jewish state and turn it into another Arab-majority state."

It seems odd, and even racist, to describe the right of Arabs to return to their homes as intrinsically destructive. There is no doubt that respecting refugees' rights would lead to the return of some individuals to their ancestral homeland (not all refugees wish to return), and would ultimately transform Israel into a state that treats Jews and non-Jews as equals.

Israel is already an Arab-majority state; 52% of Israelis are Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews, most coming from Arab countries. One of the leading organizations promoting the rights of Arab Jews even calls itself "Jews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa." A further 20.2% of Israel's citizens are Palestinian.

Yet, rather than embracing the diversity of Jewish identities and cultures from around the world, the European-dominated Zionist movement has opted for a parochial form of ultra-nationalism which suppresses Arab identity as "backward" and "primitive."

It also regards the native Arab population (Palestinians) as invisible, while Jewish people from all corners of the earth -- including recent converts to the Jewish faith -- are regarded as "indigenous" to the land.

Seeing Arabs in this light has obvious repercussions for Israel's non-Jewish Arab population. Israel's Minister of Education proclaimed "I've killed lots of Arabs in my life. There's nothing wrong with that."

And Israel's Deputy Minister of Defense described Palestinians as being "like animals. They aren't human."

Such incitement against Palestinians from Israeli cabinet ministers has becomecommonplace.

This racism isn't restricted to Palestinians; African asylum seekers are widely loathed, as well. Haaretz notes "Israel is the least moral country in the world when it comes to awarding asylum to people who deserve it, according to the United Nations Refugee Convention."

The consequences have been severe: "Interviews with former Holot prison inmates reveal that many who departed Israel in [the] past two years have been subjected to torture, imprisonment and persecution after returning home."

Jewish people should understand better than anyone the importance of granting asylum to persecuted peoples. But in Israel's obsession with engineering and maintaining a Jewish demographic majority--in a land where Jews were a tiny minority until very recently in modern history--the country has shirked its responsibilities under international law with regard to refugees. Surely, this is not the Jewish way.

In demanding that Palestinians and the international community accept Israel as a "Jewish state," Israel and its lobby groups like CIJA are in fact conflating the behaviour of this state with all Jewish people. Many Jews, like myself, see this conflation of Jewish people with militant Zionism as actually endangering Jews, both inside and outside of Israel. This is compounded by the fact that those who challenge Israel's brutal mistreatment of non-Jews under its control are frequently labeled as "anti-Semites."

CIJA is clear: it holds that anti-Zionism--an ideology opposed to the dispossession of Palestinians, institutional discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and Israel's apartheid policies--is inherently anti-Semitic. In Fogel's own words, "[University] Administrations ... are finally waking up and recognizing that this anti-Zionism, however it's expressed--whether it's BDS, or Israel Apartheid Week, or some of the programs or activities that anti-Israel forces have on campus--actually does constitute anti-Semitism." (27:01)

CIJA's Director of Communications, Steve McDonald, agrees. In response to concerns about a growing hatred of Jews based merely on the fact that they're Jewish (real anti-Semitism), he said: "I think that the bigger challenge really is ... that anti-Zionism has become the new acceptable form of anti-Semitism in certain left wing and academic circles. So I don't see the classic white supremacist anti-Semitism as in any way rising in North America." (21:23)

Many self-identifying Zionists, including Bernie Farber, former CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress (which dissolved and was replaced by the far less democratic CIJA), reject the equation of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. Farber said, in response to the allegation that the United Church's Unsettling Goods campaign is anti-Semitic, "I wouldn't wave the anti-Semitism flag [here], because I think when the Jewish community does that all the time, it confuses people and turns them off. It confuses true Jew-hatred from anti-Zionism...."

Accusing Palestinians of being anti-Semitic for strongly opposing the Zionist project--responsible for the dispossession of their homeland and the erasure of their civilization-- is at best naïve, and at worst terribly racist. And many Jews--ranging from very religious to secular--have always opposed political Zionism. Does CIJA honestly believe that all these people are anti-Semites, or are motivated by a deep-seated hatred of Jews?

It's important to recognize that not all supporters of the tactic of BDS are anti-Zionists. Increasing numbers of Zionists are waking up to the fact that Israel'songoing colonization of what little remains of Palestine must be challenged with external non-violent pressure.

The vilification of BDS activists by Israel and its lobby groups abroad (and thesuccessful criminalization of BDS in certain jurisdictions) must no longer be tolerated, lest someone get hurt.

Israeli transportation Minister Yisrael Katz recently called for a "targeted civil eliminations" effort aimed at BDS leaders--singling out the movement's founder, Omar Barghouti.

Rather than confront the increasingly racist and violent tendencies of Jewish-Israeli society, Israel lobby groups--purporting to represent Canada's diverse Jewish communities-- prefer to bury their heads in the sand.

These lobby groups would serve Israel's long-term interests far better by demanding Israel treat all those living under its control with dignity, freedom and equality. Manipulating the term "anti-Semitism" in an effort to silence dissent, and propagating timeworn myths about a "Jewish and democratic state," are mere distractions from reality. They will only lead us further astray from a just and lasting peace.

 

If Islam Is a Religion of Violence, So is Christianity by Julia Ioffe

If Islam Is a Religion of Violence, So Is Christianity

The world’s oldest religions all have troubling histories of bloodshed. Singling out Islam is just Trump’s latest, hateful hypocrisy.

If Islam Is a Religion of Violence, So Is Christianity

Speaking after “appreciating the congrats” on the Orlando shootings, Donald Trump again insisted that what mowed people down at Pulse was not an assault rifle but radical Islam, because in Trump Tower, it cannot be both. Trump’s world is binary. It is zero-sum: Either guns kill people or radical Islam kills people. In that world, only one religion can be bad, and so Christianity is good and Islam is bad. Christianity is peaceful and Islam violent. Christianity is tolerant and Islam intolerant. Both are inherently one thing or the other, immutable blueprints etched in stone for the behavior of their respective adherents.

This is a worldview that is shared by people who are Trump supporters and not Trump supporters. In the secular vernacular, we might call this view “Manichean,” that is, a binary between light and darkness, good and evil.

But it’s worth noting that “Manichean” was originally used to describe a religion that spread from Persia to the eastern and northern African parts of the Roman Empire in the third century, one that influenced many early Christians. If the word “Manichean” has negative connotations today, it might be because it was deemed a heresy by the early Catholic Church, one that needed to be ruthlessly rooted out of the Christian universe. And I mean ruthlessly: Adherents of a Manichean-tinged Christianity had their goods confiscated and were put to death, even if they converted to proper Christianity but still kept in touch with their Manichean contacts. Even St. Augustine called for their energetic persecution.

The reason I bring up the Manicheans is because I am tired of hearing, from Bill Maher and from Donald Trump, that Islam is inherently violent. I am even more tired of hearing that Christianity is inherently peaceful. I have witnessed this debate play out many times over, including at one dinner party when Laura Ingraham turned to the other guests and took a poll: Raise your hands if you think Islam is a death cult. Most of the (politically conservative) guests raised their hands and then took pains to explain to me how, unlike Islam, Christianity is inherently a religion of love.


With all due respect to my many Christian friends, I seriously beg to differ.

Conservatives roll their eyes when you mention the Crusades — oh, that old thing? — and I’m sure they will when they see the reference to the Manicheans, but they both matter, especially if you’re trying to argue that religions have inherent characteristics. If that was a perversion of Christianity, as many argue, or a fluke, then why can we not extend the same thinking toward, say, the Muslim conquests of the Middle East, or, dare I say it, the Islamic State? You cannot argue that one religion is inherently violent because of the following historical examples, and then wave away the violent history of Christianity and say the exception proves the rule.

The Crusades are still a sore subject in the Muslim world, but it’s easy to forget the havoc they wreaked on the Jews of Europe. Time after time, as Crusaders slogged southeast on their umpteenth trip to the Holy Land, they slaughtered the Jews in their path. They herded them into synagogues and set the buildings alight. The Crusaders killed so many Jews in the name of their Christian faith that it was the most stunning demographic blow to European Jewry until the Holocaust. Which, just a friendly reminder, happened in Christian, civilized Europe only 70-some years ago.

And if you don’t believe me about the brutal repression of Manichean Christians, you can read about it here in the Catholic Encyclopedia (a publication that “chronicles what Catholic artists, educators, poets, scientists and men of action have achieved in their several provinces”). The Christian Church was ruthless with people whose faith was in any way a deviation from the canon, torturing and burning heretics at the stake. After Martin Luther pinned his theses to a church door, unintentionally spawning a new wing of Christianity, it led to hundreds of years of on-and-off religious warfare between Christians, spilling each other’s blood in the fervent belief that their vision of Christ was the truest. And it’s not ancient history: Violence between Protestants and Catholics continued in Christian Ireland until the very end of the 20th century.

“Radical Islam is anti-woman, anti-gay, and anti-American,” Donald Trump said on Monday. “I refuse to allow America to become a place where gay people, Christian people, and Jewish people are the targets of persecution and intimidation by radical Islamic preachers of hate and violence.”

The point he was trying to make was that the adherents of radical Islam (whatever that is) are so uncomfortable with those who don’t share their beliefs that they can’t help but turn violent against them. Radical Islam may be all those things and more, but Christianity’s record isn’t much better.

Let’s take Trump’s concern for Jewish people being “the targets of persecution and intimidation.” It is a wonderful sentiment, but, for the past 2,000 years, until Muslim countries expelled their Jewish populations in 1948, Jews have been targets of persecution and intimidation — to put it mildly — at the hands of Christians. Jewish life in Muslim countries, though still saddled with all kinds of restrictions and orders to wear funny clothing and sporadic violence, was far less bloody than in the civilized Christian West. There are so many historical examples I could mention — Christians killing Jews because they blamed them for the plague; the fact that the word “ghetto” comes from the enclosures in which Jews were forced to live in medieval Venice; the pogroms in which the Russian Orthodox Church encouraged their flocks to kill the non-believing Jews. If that’s too far back in time for you, consider July 1988, the thousandth anniversary of the baptism of Russia: Rumors flew in Moscow that there would be a pogrom to celebrate the day Christianity came to Russia, and that the police were handing out addresses of Jews to the public. (That’s when my family decided to flee Holy Rus.)

And if you want to get a list of Christian countries that expelled the Jews but are daunted by the historical dust, look no further than the Trump supporters who regularly tweet those lists at me as proof that Jews deserve the violence they’ve gotten over the years. Then there’s the very modern phenomenon that is the Trump troll, frequentlyblasting me as a “Christ killer” who deserves anti-Semitism for “mocking the Gospel.” All this punctuated by exhortations to get back in the oven and people thoughtfully ordering coffins on my behalf.

And though Trump’s concern is for Jewish people being the subjects of persecution by “radical Islamic preachers,” it is not the radical Muslims I’m worried about as a Jew living in America. There’s plenty of hatred and anti-Semitism in the Muslim world, but the kind I receive around the clock doesn’t come from Muslims. It comes from Trump’s white, Christian supporters. I would much rather he address the persecution of Jewish journalists by his own followers, some of whom freely interweave Christian symbols, white power references, and violent threats in their communications. But Trump doesn’t address them and he certainly doesn’t disavow them. He said he has “no message” for them. Just for the radical Muslims.

Watching Trump and the Christian right go after Islam for being homophobic is, frankly, jaw-dropping. If any community in this country has shown itself to be anti-gay, it is conservative Christians and their decades of peddling hatred for gay people, comparing homosexuality to pedophilia and bestiality, claiming AIDS is divine punishment, pushing “cures” for homosexuality, and blocking laws that prevent gays not just from marrying but from being discriminated against. A Christian pastor, who has enjoyed the company of Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee, and Ted Cruz, recently said that, according to the Bible, homosexuals “deserve the death penalty.” Now the very same people who, just last month, were comparing trans people to predators who would use the wrong bathroom to hunt for child victims are suddenly lining up to defend gays from radical Islam.

And yet, in the wake of the Orlando shooting, some Christians came out to say what they really thought of those gays in that club. One Christian preacher posted a video sermon in which he praised the Orlando shootings, saying, “The good news is that there’s 50 less pedophiles in this world, because, you know, these homosexuals are a bunch of disgusting perverts and pedophiles.”

And then there are the ardent American Christians who explicitlylinkChristianity and guns, who buy up weapons like there’s no tomorrow, but who nonetheless marvel at the warlike Saracens. In fact, the unbelievable vitriol with which conservative Christians have insisted on maligning not just radicals but an entire religion looks a lot like the kind of violence and intolerance of which they accuse Muslims.

Friday will mark the one-year anniversary of Dylann Roof killing nine people in the middle of a Bible study in Charleston, S.C. Before his rampage, he wrote a manifesto declaring his allegiance to the white supremacist cause and pointing to the Council of Conservative Citizens, which claims to adhere to “Christian beliefs and values,” as a major source of information and inspiration. By some accounts, Roof came from a church-going family and attended Christian summer camp. Did Roof kill his fellow Christians because he was deranged or because Christianity is violent?”

The answer is neither. They are not exceptions, nor do they speak to a violence inherent in Christianity. Because my point is not that Christianity is evil. It isn’t. But neither is it inherently peaceful and loving. And neither is Islam. Nor Judaism nor Hinduism nor Buddhism.

No religion is inherently peaceful or violent, nor is it inherently anything other than what its followers make it out to be. People are violent, and people can dress their violence up in any number of justifying causes that seek to relieve people of their personal responsibility because the cause or religion, be it Communism or Catholicism or Islam, is simply bigger than themselves. It’s very convenient for both the perpetrator of violence and his accuser, and yet totally useless: Something can be done with a person who has transgressed, but what can you do with an amorphous concept?


Christianity, as I have seen it practiced by my friends or by Christians who saved Jews during the Holocaust, can be beautiful and peaceful and loving. Islam, as it was practiced in medieval Spain, was beautiful and peaceful, too. It can also be hideous and violent, as we’ve seen in many parts of the Middle East, in Europe, and in America in recent decades. Judaism, which people either equate with consumptive erudition or insularity, can wax violent, too. Hanukkah, every secular Jew’s favorite holiday, celebrates in part the victory of the radical, purist Jews over their assimilated, Hellenized brethren. And for my co-religionists piling onto Muslims for their homophobia, let’s rememberYishai Schlissel, who stabbed six at a gay pride parade in Jerusalem — and that was his second attack on the LGBT event. And, heck, let’s throw in Baruch Goldstein, too. Remember him, the guy who killed 29 Muslims as they prayed? Is he an exception, or does his act define Judaism’s inherent characteristics?

Even Buddhism, which many imagine to be the very definition of peace, can be bloody. Just look at Sri Lanka, where a Buddhist majority fought a vicious civil war against the Hindu north, or Myanmar, where Buddhists have violently persecuted the Muslim Rohingya.

No religion is inherently violent. No religion is inherently peaceful. Religion, any religion, is a matter of interpretation, and it is often in that interpretation that we see either beauty or ugliness — or, more often, if we are mature enough to think nuanced thoughts, something in between.

   
 
   

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