Tuesday, June 29, 2010
[The following, by Will Spotts, is crossposted from The PC(USA) on Israel and Palestine.]
If you want to say something offensive about Israel or the Jewish community, find a Jewish person who is saying it and quote him. That way you are absolved of all responsibility for the offense, and you couldn't possibly be an anti-Jewish bigot.
This notion is so absurd it should require no response. Yet the tactic is being employed with such increasing frequency that, apparently, someone must believe it. I'm not really sure whether the believers are the people attempting to use Jewish voices for cover or their target audience.
In the PC(USA) context, uses of this tactic abound. Here are a few examples:
· In the Middle East Study Committee Report, one finds this remarkable statement:
"Israel acts as a spoiled child. America has helped create this undisciplined child. It depends on the U.S. for its lifeline of funding and weapons ... even though the state of Israel is supposed to be a democracy, it acts as a Nazi state."
It is attributed to an unnamed Israeli activist. Of course, no one would suspect the Middle East Study Committee member of saying something profoundly offensive ... ALL SHE'S DOING IS QUOTING AN ISRAELI ACTIVIST.
· The Israel Palestine Mission Network of the PC(USA) has often sought to distance the Jews from the residents of biblical Israel. Part of their motivation seems to be to negate any historic or biblical Jewish claim to the land. This is, of course, a familiar refrain within Palestinian propaganda. The Khazar argument raises problems, however, because it has also been a familiar refrain (from the late 19th Century on) among the most vicious and rabidly antisemitic groups. This is how the IPMN decided to handle the difficulty:
The founding narrative of the State of Israel links the modern-day Jews' claim to the land of Israel/Palestine to their direct genealogical descent from the ancient Israelites. Recent anthropological scholarship shows that this widespread belief is very likely a myth, not historical fact. Shlomo Sand, an expert on European history at the university of Tel Aviv, and author of When and How Was the Jewish People Invented? posits that the Jews were never exiled en masse from the Holy Land and that many European Jewish populations converted to the faith centuries later. Thus, he argues, many of today's Israelis who emigrated from Europe after World War II have little or no genealogical connection to the ancient land of Israel.
Thus the IPMN is not advancing an argument that is inextricably linked to the vilest forms of antisemitism. They're only innocently talking about Shlomo Sand's opinions.
· Shortly after the IPMN launched its website, they featured a powerpoint presentation attributed to Minnesota born Jewish Israeli activist and ICAHD founder Jeff Halper. [Interestingly, the IPMN has given money directly to ICAHD.] Among other things, a reader of this presentation is told:
The Jewish community in the diaspora must get a life.
There is no possible response to this.
This tactic is morally vacuous and deserving of ridicule. But more importantly, it is based on a falsehood. Yes, it can sometimes deceive the gullible; and yes, it can help some people deceive themselves about the true nature of the actions and statements. But ultimately, it cannot provide what its users want. The reasons for this are simple and obvious.
First, the Jewish population is not large - about 14 million worldwide, 6 million living in Israel. Nonetheless, Jewish opinions could hardly be called monolithic. In fact, you have a pretty good chance of finding someone who self-identifies as Jewish saying just about anything you want. This is true even among Israeli Jews. The effect is meaningless. It has no more or less relevance than citing the statements of a random Inuit or practitioner of Scientology to bolster your case. Think about it ... big shock, someone has an opinion on the Israeli - Palestinian conflict or the Jewish people.
Second, the use of this tactic by the PC(USA) and others overlooks the considerable difference between internal and external criticism. In many cases it oversimplifies the discussion - bypassing any nuanced debate in favor of putting forward its own agenda. For example, the PC(USA) never explores Khazar history and various possible interpretations and arguments. Instead, it considers relating Sand's general thesis to be sufficient to accomplish its rhetorical purpose. But in every case - speaking as an "outsider", but using "insider" quotes, the PC(USA) displays a high degree of contempt for the "other" - in this case, for the Jewish people.
Third, there is a self-evident double standard in the use of this tactic. It is not applied to any other nation - negative (and plainly offensive) things said about China by some individual Chinese people are not quoted by the PC(USA). Equally, in American churches one does not see the same treatment of other religious groups. Can you really imagine the PC(USA) quoting a Muslim telling Muslims to "Get a life?" How about Catholics? The same would be true of ethnic groups. If the PC(USA) were to find an African American who told other African Americans to get a life - would they quote him?
At the end of the day, this tactic is absurd, it is logically flawed, it is inherently offensive, and it in no way mitigates anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias. Yet we continue to see its employment.
Will Spotts
Indeed, its used all the time by various groups attacking white Euros, Christians, males, etc...
Just quote the Western Left.