Back From the Holy Land

In response to Marcos's comments on my post "Trip to the Holy Land":

1) The Monthly Review is a pretty decent publication: it's authors write well, back themselves up, and serve a clearly-stated editorial line. The magazine's been around for some thirty years, it's founders were two well-known economists (Sweezy and Huberman), and many of its writings seem vindicated on economics (our current meltdown) and Israel (given PM Olmert's latest statements and what Israel must do to obtain peace).

2) I criticize Brazil and the US just as much, probably more. Israel is just that much worst because it is automatically suppose to be a Saintly nation, its people innocent of any wrong-doing, and all of us Jews are apparently to stand by its side right or wrong. It's annoying, and these old men from São Paulo are exactly the type of fascist assholes that get on my nerves. And the reason I started this blog is to give my nerves a break.

Mini Trip to the Holy Land, continued

My post "On Jews and Being Jewish" also mentioned the conflict between religious and secular sectors of Israeli society. The following post from MuzzleWatch clarifies this a great deal.

Mini-Trip to the Holy Land

As stated in a previous post, I've been termed self-loathing because, amongst other reasons, I:

1. Don't consider myself Jewish, and
2. Don't like Israel. At all.

As for item 1, it is explained, to a certain degree, in the post I mentioned ("On Jews and Being Jewish"). As for item 2, well, the evidence just seems to mount, year after year, as to why Israel is not the victim it always claims to be. One example amongst many -and the many can be found in the link to the If Americans Knew website I've put on my blog- is this one, where the Israelis are planning a renewal of Jaffa by simply expelling its Palestinian residents.

A few years back, if someone told me that I was a self-hating Jew for doubting Israel, I would've been a bit shaken. However, as I keep reading about the state of Israel, I become surer by the day that if not supporting what said state does means I hate myself, then so be it.

On Jews and Being Jewish

Supposedly, I'm Jewish. However, something tells me there's no such thing as "Jewish" as much as Hebrew, say. What there is is Jews, or the Jewish religion. And religion, as I have expressed earlier, is shit. I have no qualms in being egalitarian, so to speak, in holding in contempt not only "my" religion, but everybody else's (and I include here the militant atheism of Dawkins and Co.), especially the three religions of the Book, which are particularly hateful and which these days add nothing but ignorance and despair to whatever humanity it is we have left.

However, since the Church made sure that it would be the world's bastion of violence and ignorance for centuries on end; and since Islam has revealed itself to be particularly inept at living in a post-Enlightenment world (hell: it is still, for all practical purposes, stuck in the Middle Ages), Jews have been seen as reasonable, sane, down to earth, different from the other two more "barbaric" religions.

Which is why this makes me smile. Seriously, it makes me smile. It reminds me that not belonging to anything that can be remotely close to this nonsense is a profoundly wise decision, all modesty aside.

It also reminds me that the difference between ultra-orthodox Jews in Israel and ultra-orthodox Muslims in Afghanistan taking or having power, is a matter of timing and historical forces. Concerning the history, we once again have the issue of Judaism having not only faced the Enlightenment but also having learned and matured from it (which is why, up until Hitler, there were so many assimilated Jews in Europe who simply didn't care that they were Jews), which Muslims clearly did not. So, with Israel, we have a violence towards Arabs that many times stems from a series of sources, such as religion itself, ethnicity, and nationalism, whereas the Taliban is not nationalistic in the slightest, though they claim otherwise.

But how long before this small group of ultra-orthodox Jews we see in the article above see their behavior become the norm? It's a walk in the park to find Jews in Israel or the United States who have no issue with Israel being a terrorist state, since the Arabs are non-white/Muslim/choose-your-prejudice (and, for that matter, there seems to be no problem with evangelical Christians on this front, as verified by the US's Republican Party's stance towards Israel). If the Israeli government were to pursue an actual peace plan (with a US green light, of course), it is very likely a civil war would ensue in said state. After all, what would a militaristic soceity, run by warriors and religious hot-heads, do with itself if all of a sudden it were left without its principal enemy?

However (there's always good news somewhere), a growing number of Israelis (as evidenced by the mushrooming local peace movement, led by B'Tselem) and an ever-increasing number of practicing Jews throughout the world are already beginning to question openly what Israel is about, and whether it can ever move past its enmities, real or imagined; whether the state in question will be more than a watchdog for America and a playground for nationalist and religious zealots in its free time. They are finally beginning to realize that you either have a theocracy (Israel is, after all, a Jewish State) or a democracy. There is no meeting point between the two.

It has been suggested that I am self-loathing, principally because I refuse "my" religion (and "my" state, or so it would seem). I cannot comprehend, however, how it is that I and these ultra-orthodox Jews pictured in the Guardian's article share anything in common, save our common humanity, which they seem to utterly despise. But their attitudes are grounded on a doctrine, a doctrine available for anyone to read, for anyone to share or not. I choose not to. I refuse to be identified with people who, at the end of the day, are the real Judaism, the Judaism found in the Torah, the one where women, homosexuals and non-Jews are the scum of the Earth. I don't belong to a Chosen People, unless the chosen are unconditionally you and me, and I can't agree to be amongst those that pick and choose, based on words written by barbarians from thousands of years ago, who they will and will not consider their friends and foes.