Dutch May Boycott Durban II

Photo Credit: Buitenlandse Zaken (Dutch Foreign Ministry)

Earlier today, Maxime Verhagen, Foreign Minister of the Netherlands, threatened that his country would not participate in the planned UN Anti-Racism Conference, which is to take place in Geneva in April 2009. 

Verhagen said that 

Nederland zal er niet aan meewerken dat deze top, net zoals de vorige, ontaard in een antisemitische hetze (Foreign Affairs press release).

The Netherlands will not take part if this conference, like the previous one, turns into antisemitic agitation [my rough translation - Dutch speakers, please correct mistakes!]

He objected to a draft that accused Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians. The minister has also opposed moves by Islamic member states to issue a declaration against "blasphemy" at the conference, and he has initiated a UN declaration calling for a decriminalization of homosexuality. 

A Dutch boycott of "Durban II" would be a significant blow to the conference and may result in boycotts by other European nations. At a talk about the conference that I attended recently, one audience member, who had recently interviewed Verhagen, expressed skepticism about the likelihood of the Dutch delegation walking out of the conference. Hillel Neuer of UN Watch, on the other hand, suggested that it was a real possibility. 

Durban II

Hillel Neuer (l) of Geneva-based UN Watch and Aaron Jacob of AJC (r)  in New York, December 2008

The last UN Conference against Racism in Durban, held in late August 2001, quickly turned into a disgraceful spectacle of Israel-bashing and downright antisemitism. Anyone interested in a personal, though occasionally melodramatic account, of the conference, should check out the "Durban Diaries," by a member of the European Union of Jewish Students who attended it as part of a large delegation of the NGO. A follow-up to the Durban conference, which was actually the third UN Conference against Racism, will be held at the end of April 2009. 

On Monday, December 8, Hillel Neuer of the Geneva-based NGO UN Watch briefed a small audience of AJC Access members in New York on what happened at Durban I and what might happen at Durban II. It does not look good.

The first Durban conference consisted of the actual governmental conference attended by UN member states, an NGO forum, and a series of street demonstration in the South African city. It was at the NGO forum and street demonstrations where some of the worst excesses of the "anti-racism" conference took place. But even the governmental conference involved a protracted fight by the US, Israel, and some of the European countries, against a declaration that specifically accused Israel of apartheid, crimes against humanity, and genocide, without mentioning any other states. This particular part of the declaration had been formulated at the Asian regional conference in February 2001.

At the 2007 preparatory conference for Durban II, Libya was chosen to chair the 2009 conference against racism. The 19 vice chairs chosen included Cuba and Iran. Worse, the current draft declaration includes a verbatim copy of the 2001 Tehran wording. 

Neuer outlined 3 categories of problematic language in the declaration proposals so far - a longer review of the document has been published in a report titled "Shattering the Red Lines." UN Watch has expressed concern in

1. specifically anti-Israel language, including the charge that the Law of Return is inherently racist
   
2. broadly anti-Western material
   
3. a campaign by the Islamic states  to import anti-blasphemy provisions and legitimize them in international law under the notion of “defamation of religion”
   

The latest draft proposals hammered out at the preparatory conference, by no means final, nevertheless testify to the direction in which Durban II might be headed.

So far, only Canada has announced that it is not attending the conference. Israel will be making a decision soon, and the U.S. will do so after the inaugaration of Barack Obama as President. Meanwhile, the Europeans have pledged to maintain certain red lines that, if crossed by the conference, will compel them to walk out of the process. However, it remains to be seen whether they will act on this. 

I hope to post more details later.

European Antisemitism: Stupidity, Malevolence, or Both?

I wish one could laugh at the stupidity of this headline, which the editors of the Greek daily Avriani saw fit to print yesterday, and which came to my attention via the American Jewish Committee:

The anticipated victory of Obama in the U.S. elections signals the end of Jewish domination. Everything changes in the USA and we hope that it will be more democratic and humane.

If only it weren't so evil, in addition to being completely out of touch with reality.

Perhaps the headline of my post, which refers to "European" antisemitism is misleading. But I happen to think that there is a significant minority of Europeans who share the sentiment of Avriani but are still too cautious to articulate it in public. Granted, antisemitism in post-war Greece, on both the left and right, which is one of those phenomena that seems to defy rational explanation, is especially virulent. But didn't the talk of Jewish neo-cons and lobbies strike the biggest chord in virtually Jew-free Europe?

I fear that pointing out the overwhelming support for Obama among American Jewish voters (77%!) is the wrong strategy for handling this nonsense. And alerting Avriani's editors to the biography of Obama's rumored pick for chief of staff might be similarly counter-productive. The great champions of "democratic and humane" values would do well to examine themselves more closely.

Norman Finkelstein

Anyone who believes that it is unfair that Norman Finkelstein did not receive tenure should read the man's review of Jan Gross's Neighbors. This piece of tendentious and antisemitic garbage, which he proudly published in a right-of-center Polish newspaper, should have been enough to sway any university committee against giving Finkelstein tenure.

Criticism and Antisemitism

On a Facebook group called "ADL Should Acknowledge the Armenian Genocide," Jeremy Menchik from Wisconsin says:

The *immediate* purpose, Jewish interests, has always taken precedent [sic] over civil rights for all. Examples: the Sylvio Berlesconi [sic] affair, vocal support for the war in Iraq, persistent harrassment [sic] of mainstream Muslim-American organizations, the deliberate blurring of anti-zionism with anti-semitism in order to slander enemies, close cooperation with the FBI and Department of Homeland Security, opposition to Affirmative Action, etc etc. The mistake in this discussion, therefore, is thinking that ADL would do anything *but* deny the Armenian genocide.

Is this antisemitism? Just wondering.

I thought this was apropos our discussion about the ADL brouhaha below, andI think that my question also touches on an earlier discussion I had with Redel and others.

Another British Boycott

Israeli universities are under attack
(Photo: Ben Gurion University, June 2006)

UPDATE: I highly recommend Judy's blog, Adloyada, for her coverage of the boycott. She predicted that a boycott motion would be passed, and has some background on the union personalities pro and contra the resolution. She also notes some of the obfuscatory statements by anti-boycott groups, who claim that the motion will be subjected to balloting by all members, hence preventing it from being adopted as policy. On the other hand, she argues that no respectable universities will actually implement such a boycott, and that we should all take a pill. Check out these links - you are unlikely to get this kind of scoop anywhere else.

On Wednesday, delegates at a congress of the University and College Union (UCU) in Britain passed a motion that calls for the circulation, among the trade union's branches, of a Palestinian appeal to impose an academic boycott on Israel. As far as I can tell from the union's rather opaque press release, the branches will eventually have to approve the boycott for it go into effect.

This appears to be the text of the resolution passed at the congress:

In3 Composite: Boycott of Israeli Academic Institutions (University of Brighton, Grand Parade; University of East London, Docklands)

Congress notes that Israel's 40-year occupation has seriously damaged the fabric of Palestinian society through annexation, illegal settlement, collective punishment and restriction of movement.

Congress deplores the denial of educational rights for Palestinians by invasions, closures, checkpoints, curfews, and shootings and arrests of teachers, lecturers and students.

Congress condemns the complicity of Israeli academia in the occupation, which has provoked a call from Palestinian trade unions for a comprehensive and consistent international boycott of all Israeli academic institutions.

Congress believes that in these circumstances passivity or neutrality is unacceptable and criticism of Israel cannot be construed as anti-semitic.

Congress instructs the NEC to

• circulate the full text of the Palestinian boycott call to all branches/LAs for information and discussion;
• encourage members to consider the moral implications of existing and proposed links with Israeli academic institutions;
• organise a UK-wide campus tour for Palestinian academic/educational trade unionists;
• issue guidance to members on appropriate forms of action.

Clearly, something is rotten in the state of British academia for such a motion to have passed once again. I do not intend here to demonstrate why Israel should merit not be boycotted by British academics, as the onus really ought to be on those behind this vile measure to prove their case. Perhaps most galling is the obvious injustice of singling out Israel, among all the nations of the world, as the one target deserving of this kind. But the simplistic, one-sided, and self-exculpatory nature of this resolution is also striking.

The first two paragraphs pin all the blame for the hardships suffered by Palestinian civilians, including the "denial of educational rights," on Israel. This is a willful and immoral distortion of the truth. The shootings, closures, and curfews to which the bill refers do not take place in a vacuum; they are responses to acts of terror against Israeli civilians. One may argue about whether specific measures are justified or not, but this resolution assumes from the start that all of Israel's actions are illegitimate. In other words, according to the framers of this motion, Israel's attempts to protect and defend its citizens from murderous attacks - designed specifically to kill Israeli civilians - are a priori immoral. Surely, this is perverse and itself worthy of moral condemnation.

The third paragraph then goes on to make all of Israeli academia complicit in Israel's alleged crimes. This, of course, is charge on which the call for an academic boycott hangs. Many people have made counter-arguments to the effect that a significant number of Israeli academics actually oppose "the occupation." While this happens to be true, such a counter-argument concedes far too much to a position that ought to be resisted with outrage and moral fortitude, rather than feeble apologetics.

As I have suggested above, blanket condemnation of Israeli actions in the territories is itself morally suspect, as it enjoins the state from protecting its citizens. However, even more dubious is the charge that Israeli universities and colleges as a whole are complicit "in the occupation." Israeli universities do not determine government policy. Even if a professor in the department of molecular biology at Hebrew University reports to reserve duty at a checkpoint in the West Bank, that scholar's research and teaching are not complicit in oppression. I was flabbergasted to read the statements of a certain Michael Cushman from LSE, which were reprinted in the Guardian:

During the debate, which lasted well over an hour, Michael Cushman, from the London School of Economics, said: "Universities are to Israel what the springboks were to South Africa: the symbol of their national identity."

Israel wanted to claim it was a normal democratic state and universities were integral to that, Mr Cushman said. "[But] it is not a normal state. They are not normal universities.

"Senior academics move from universities into ministries and back again," he said.

"Regularly, lecturers take up their commissions in the Israeli Defence Force as reserve officers to go into the West Bank to dominate, control and shoot the population."

By Cushman's logic Israeli hospitals, synagogues, and elementary schools are also "complicit" in the occupation. Indeed, as the allusion to the South African rugby team (the Springboks), banned from competition in the 1980s and until 1995, makes clear, this is the logic of the UCU motion: Israel, just like apartheid South Africa, has no legitimacy. Its entire society is criminal. Hence, all of its institutions are somehow involved in that rather abstract entity of "the occupation." In other words, no citizen of Israel is immune from the collective punishment meted out by the UCU or other unions.

The single-minded ascription of all evil in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to Israel - indeed, the projection of this evil onto Israeli citizens, whether civilians or combatants - makes one wonder about the preemptive self-defense clause in the last paragraph of the motion. Is there any other people in the world today that this British union would choose to punish in this manner?

The dream of political Zionism was to turn the Jews into a nation with a state like all other nations, not only in order to provide Jews with a haven from antisemitism, but also to end antisemitism tout court, precisely by "normalizing" the Jews. This project has clearly failed. Israel has become the Jew of the nations - on its punishment (or, preferably, destruction), in the minds of today's redeemers of the world, hangs the restoration of cosmic justice.

Interestingly, the following motion did not make it onto the agenda of the congress, because it was received after a March 21, 2007 deadline:

VV Supporting cooperation between the UCU, Palestine, and Israel (Kingston University)

Congress calls for an end to the 40-year Occupation of Palestinian territory, and supports a free and viable Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Preferring cooperation and rapprochement to hostility and exclusion, Congress believes that a boycott of Israeli academics would be counter-productive and harm voices for dialogue.

Reaffirming UCU's commitment to academic freedom and equality, Congress opposes punishing an entire academic sector for the actions of its country’s government – whether Israeli, Palestinian or any other nationality.

Congress resolves that that UCU support cooperative projects that bring together Israeli and Palestinian academia to work towards a peaceful settlement, and to work with Palestinian and Israeli Trade Unions to defend the right of Palestinian students and academics to study free from harassment or unfair restrictions.

I have seen no coverage of the boycott vote in the European press - if someone finds German, French, Italian, or Spanish reports on it, please post the links here. The New York Times has a slightly facetious article about the vote.

The American Jewish Committee is spearheading action against the boycott.

Another Attack in Montreal

The entrance to the Ben Weider JCC two days after the incident - there is no visible damage to the sidewalk

On Tuesday night, at around 11 pm, a small homemade bomb was detonated in front of the Ben Weider Jewish Community Centre, the "Jewish Y" in Snowdon, Montreal (CBC). There were no injuries. The gym and complex are currently closed due to Passover, so the disruption will hopefully be minimal. Our Montreal correspondents, who live only five minutes down the block, report that part of the sidewalk in front of the building was blackened by the blast.

It is not yet known whether this was indeed an anti-Jewish attack, but I think it is fairly likely that it was. The Ben Weider Centre is about 3 minutes walking from the Cummings Centre for senior citizens, which was defaced with antisemitic graffiti last December (see our coverage). That graffiti appears to have been the work of Russian nationalist antisemites (Canadian Jewish News), perhaps from the neighborhood. The area is home to large number of synagogues, day schools, yeshivot, and other communal institutions, such as the Saidye Bronfman theater, the Jewish Federation, and the Jewish Public Library. As a former member of the gym and resident of the area, I am surprised how something like this could happen there.

Montreal's Jewish population numbers around 92,000. Overall, there is still a trend of Jewish emigration out of Montreal. Many of the emigrants leave for Toronto, home to Canada's largest Jewish community. In Snowdon, Jews of different religious persuasions and backgrounds (from Yiddish-speaking hasidim to francophone North African Jews to recent Russian-Jewish immigrants) live alongside growing Filipino and Tamil populations, many of whom use the library as well as the gym. An attack on the Y is thus not just an attack on the large Jewish population of Snowdon (as well as those Montrealers who come from other parts of the city); it also threatens the many non-Jewish residents of the area who use its services.

German Police Cadets are Sick of the Holocaust

Berlin Police Commissioner Dieter Glietsch
(Photo: Berlin.de)

German politicians, activists, and Jewish community representatives have expressed outrage over comments allegedly made by "an entire class of police cadets" to a Holocaust survivor who was delivering a lecture on the Nazi period, antisemitism, and xenophobia at the Berlin Police Academy.

The incident took place nearly a month ago, on February 27, when the 83-year-old Isaak Behar visited the class, as part of a session about the Nazi regime mandated by the curriculum. Police cadets apparently told Behar that they resented "constantly being reminded about the Holocaust." Others made remarks to the effect that "Jews are rich" (Tagesspiegel).

The story, first reported by the Berliner Zeitung, has received widespread coverage in German newspapers since it broke on March 19. A report of what transpired during the discussion only reached Berlin's Police Commissioner, Dieter Glietsch, last week, "almost by accident" and through sources outside of the department. It is possible that Behar himself brought it to Glietsch's attention. The commissioner expressed his consternation about the report and about the fact that it had only reached him now (Berliner Zeitung). An inquiry has already begun, and condemnation has been virtually unanimous.

Reports about a resurgence of antisemitism in Germany invariably make big headlines - in Germany and abroad. There are certainly reasons to be concerned, but I hope that the blame does not fall on the German police or state, for the problem clearly lies elsewhere. This has not always been the case. Just twenty years ago, German politicians and civil servants were far slower in responding to reports of antisemitism. But the current German elite is sui generis in its awareness of the dark sides of the German past and its dedication to combating antisemitism and Holocaust denial - with a few exceptions. I would even go so far as to say that no country's political elite in the world today can claim to be as sincere as Germany's in confronting its past.

While the current German elite, which came to political maturity in the 1960s, shares a fundamental consensus about the importance of Holocaust education, a younger generation of Germans is slowly undermining the values and institutions for which some of its parents (the ones born in West Germany) struggled for several decades. This younger generation, composed of men and women who while born in pre-1989 West or East Germany have spent most of their lives in the unified Federal Republic, today declares that it is "sick of the Holocaust." In the words of one German headline "Deutsche Polizisten: Kein Bock auf Holocaust Vortrag" (if anyone knows how to translate this into equally compelling idiomatic English, please let me know).

Of course, German fatigue about the Holocaust, which once prompted Henryk Broder to quip that "the Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz," is not an entirely new phenomenon. Perhaps there has always been a profound disconnect between the discourse of the elite described earlier and that of German society at large. Things have only become more complicated since Germany's unification, especially as neo-Nazi or "national" groups in East Germany emerged as protest movements against the communist regime before 1989, and against immigrants and leftists today. I think the reaction of the police cadets reflects the views of large segments of the German people from similar class backgrounds. They have increasingly come to the conclusion that the Holocaust is being rammed down their throats.

Contrary to the claims of right-wing demagogues, I don't believe that there is a surfeit of Holocaust education in the country. But an effective strategy to counter these dangerous tendencies cannot consist in hysteria about the return of Nazism to Germany. Perhaps, it might be a better idea to dwell on the positive. Organizations such as the American Jewish Committee have long realized this. The point is that Germans have a great deal to be proud of when it comes to dealing with their history - just consider, for the sake of comparison, the situation in Japan or Turkey. The German elite should be confident of this record and its role in in these achievements; it should speak of German accomplishments in this sphere as much as it speaks of duties and responsibilities today. At the same time, of course Germans must continue to monitor and engage critically, in clear terms and without glossing over the issues involved, the kind of self-serving (and often antisemitic) ressentiment that came to the surface in the affair of the Berlin police cadets.

ON A DIFFERENT NOTE:
I encountered some bizarre transcriptions of German words in a Ha'aretz article about the incident described above. The article referred to chants of "Zig [sic] Heil" (i.e. Sieg Heil), and to the police academy's tours of the "Ziekenhuizen [sic] concentration camp" (probably the Sachsenhausen KZ just outside Berlin). I'm not sure how to explain these transcriptions - both of these spellings look vaguely Dutch to me, so maybe they hired some translators from the Netherlands or Belgium.

Jewish Kindergarten Attacked in Berlin

Police search the crime scene. The graffiti reads "[Get] out of here." (Spiegel)

Vandals defaced a Jewish kindergarten in Berlin with swastikas and antisemitic messages last Sunday. They also threw a smoke bomb into the building and apparently tried to set it on fire. The Chabad-run "Gan Yisrael" was unoccupied at the time. As of today, there are still no leads in the police's search for suspects (Berliner Morgenpost). However, most of the press has been reporting that the attack was carried out by neo-Nazis.

There has been a revival of Jewish life in Berlin over the past 5 years. The growth in infrastructure is due largely to the activities of Rabbi Josh Spinner, backed by the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation, on the one hand, and Chabad on the other. Spinner established a yeshiva in the eastern part of the city (Rykestrasse in Prenzlauer Berg), while Chabad has built a new synagogue, community center, and kindergarten in the west, not too far from the city's main traditional synagogue. They have been trying to meet as well as to stimulate the increased demand for Jewish religious life that has accompanied the immigration to Germany of Jews from the former Soviet Union since the early 1990s.

Neither the members of the yeshiva nor the Chabad rabbi, Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal and his shluhim (lit., "emissaries" - basically young interns) hide their Judaism. The Israeli rabbi of the traditional Joachimsthaler shul, Rabbi Yitzhak Ehrenberg also walks around Berlin as if he were in New York or Bnei Brak. Aside from staying true to what they would do in North America or Israel, the rabbis have been trying to inspire their congregants to be public about their Judaism. There is no doubt, however, that attacks such as the one on the kindergarten will make those few religious Jews who do wear kippot in public reconsider.

Unlike the rabbis, the young hazan (cantor) of the shul, who hails from Har Nof in Jerusalem, slightly adjusted his wardrobe (at least when I last saw him several years ago), opting for a beige stetson in favor of a black Borsalino.

Many, though not all, Jewish institutions in Berlin are protected by two security details. City police officers maintain a 24-hour presence in front of the community synagogues, while Israeli security guards monitor all those who want to enter, during regular hours. I am surprised that the kindergarten was not equipped with surveillance cameras at the least.

To my knowledge, the incident has not made the pages of Ha'aretz, but the Jerusalem Post carried a wire report on it last Monday. Deidre Berger, the director of the American Jewish Committee's Berlin Office, visited the kindergarten after the attack to express the organization's solidarity with the staff, parents, and children.

A Factual Basis for the Blood Libel? Not Really

Blood Libel, Damascus, 1983 (Source: ADL)

I am almost starting to feel sorry for Professor Ariel Toaff. First, the professor's fellow Jews got all angry at him for claiming that the original blood libel accusations had some basis in the historical reality of the Middle Ages. In Israel, he complained, they had begun treating him "like Yigal Amir," the assassin of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin z"l. Now he has begun morphing into Jesus; in an interview from Rome, Toaff told Ha'aretz that he "will not give up [his] devotion to the truth and academic freedom even if the world crucifies [him]." Seriously though, I am hoping that for his sake he stops saying stupid things and starts making sense soon.

The controversy began with the publication, in Italy, of Toaff's book Pasque di Sangue [Passover of Blood] a few days ago. The new work was praised in several Italian newspapers. Toaff, a respected medieval Jewish historian who specializes in Italian Jewry and is the descendant of an important Italian Jewish family, claimed that in his new book he had discovered evidence that some of the blood libels against the Jews in the early modern period (I've read report after report referring to the "Middle Ages"; but blood libels really took off in the late 15th century, and the one to which Toaff refers, in Trent, dates to 1475) had a factual basis.

Toaff's statements in the media have been widely interpreted as implying that some Jews actually sacrificed Christian children and used their blood for ritual purposes, most famously for baking matzot for Passover. Toaff, doing his best to reinforce the worst stereotypes about members of his profession, has done nothing to deny such conclusions, instead throwing tantrums about those maligning him and generally acting with no understanding of how normal people might perceive the kinds of statements he has been making.

Obviously, I have not read Toaff's book yet. But from everything he's said in interviews, I am having a hard time discovering what this "factual basis" of the blood libel might be. All I see is a number of vague statements, which are interesting but hardly amount to a real argument for the veracity of the blood libel.

So, for example, Toaff told Ha'aretz that

I tried to show that the Jewish world at that time was also violent, among other things because it had been hurt by Christian violence. Of course I do not claim that Judaism condones murder. But within Ashkenazi Judaism there were extremist groups that could have committed such an act and justified it.

The first part is an interesting contribution, though not terribly original in light of the work by Hebrew University Professor Israel J. Yuval on qidush hashem (lit. "sanctification of the divine name") during the Crusades. In a pioneering Hebrew article, Yuval speculated that the martyrdom by Ashkenazi Jewry, where Jewish parents killed their own children and themselves to avoid forced conversion or death at the hands of crusaders, might have led Christians to imagine that Jews would "sacrifice" non-Jewish children as revenge. This work is now available in the English translation of his book שני גוים בבטנך (Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, 2006). The original article was published in Zion 58:1 (5753 = 1993); it's called הנקם והקללה, הדם והעלילה : מעלילות קדושים לעלילות דם ["Vengeance and Damnation, Blood and Defamation: From the Stories of Martyrs to Blood Libel Charges"].

So yes, this was a violent world. And yes, perhaps there were such "extremist groups." But if Toaff is so convinced of his claims, why say that they could have committed "such an act"? It doesn't inspire much confidence in his conclusions, and makes me suspect that Yuval was right on when he called "Professor Toaff's interpretation ... trumped-up" (Ha'aretz).

Matters become even murkier when Toaff discusses the evidence he used to arrive at his interpretation:

Toaff said he reached his conclusions after coming across testimony from the trial for the murder of a Christian child, Simon of Trento, in 1475, which in the past was believed to have been falsified. "I found there were statements and parts of the testimony that were not part of the Christian culture of the judges, and they could not have been invented or added by them. They were components appearing in prayers known from the [Jewish] prayer book.

It's a very big step from liturgy to murder. Few people would deny that Jews, especially in the Middle Ages, often cursed Christians whom they saw as their oppressors, especially after the Crusades. Particularly in the Pesach liturgy, which recounts the liberation of Israel from slavery and God's bloody revenge against the Egyptians, there is no shortage of rather violent exhortations, such as the one recited before Hallel in the Seder:

שפך חמתך על הגוים אשר לא ידעוך ...
Pour Your wrath onto the nations who do not acknowledge you ...

And let's not forget that the first plague against the Egyptians is "blood." Or the use of red wine, which is dripped on the table for each plague. But is this evidence for the "ritual murder" of Christian children? It seems much more plausible to read such rituals as evidence for the sublimation of suffering and desires for revenge into ceremony. (The story of Trent 1475 has already been told, by the way, by Ronnie Hsia, a very fine scholar at Pennsylvania State University, who, I was hoping, might come to Berkeley.)

In the Ha'aretz interview, Toaff claims that

Over many dozens of pages [he] proved the centrality of blood on Passover (...). [And that b]ased on many sermons, [he] concluded that blood was used, especially by Ashkenazi Jews, and that there was a belief in the special curative powers of children's blood. It turns out that among the remedies of Ashkenazi Jews were powders made of blood.

Again, yes, blood is important in the Passover haggadah. It's also important in the Bible as a whole. Is this evidence that medieval and early modern Jews transgressed the explicit prohibitions on ingesting animal (and, a fortiori, human) blood, not to mention the commandments against murder?

Even if the kind of folk remedies to which Toaff refers existed, I am having a hard time seeing their connection to "ritual murder." This statement confused me further:

Toaff said the use of blood was common in medieval medicine. "In Germany, it became a real craze. Peddlers of medicines would sell human blood, the way you have a transfusion today. The Jews were influenced by this and did the same things.

So was the use of blood a Passover ritual or something that everyone did throughout the year? I am also curious how exactly Toaff was able to infer such things from sermons.

The kicker of the whole affair to me is the admission by Toaff, in the Ha'aretz interview, that he had

no proof of acts of murder ... [only that] there were curses and hatred of Christians, and prayers inciting to cruel vengeance against Christians. "There was always the possibility that some crazy person would do something."

A possibility that a crazy person might have done something does not constitute a factual basis for anything. In light of his own statements, Toaff's original claims strike me as incredibly reckless and irresponsible. I have nightmares just thinking about lecture courses where a professor teaching medieval European history tells a room full of undergraduates that "one Jewish scholar has recently concluded that the blood libel had some factual basis." Can anyone tell me that those students would not walk out of the room believing that Jews actually murdered Christian children and used their blood for Passover rituals? I guess every century needs its blood libel.

Montreal Antisemitism

The Cummings Centre for Jewish Senior Citizens defaced by a swastika - Thursday, December 28, 2006

The above are pictures of the latest Jewish institution to be defaced in Montreal. The Cummings Centre provides services for senior citizens, including kosher meals, lectures and social activities. The swastika pictured above must have been spray painted in the evening of Thursday, December 28, 2006. There are almost certainly Holocaust survivors among the people who will be visiting the centre this Friday morning. The Jewish community in Montreal has been feeling under fire since the outbreak of the second intifada. There have already been several attacks on Jewish schools in Montreal, including a firebomb attack on a Jewish school reported on in this blog last September. Lately, an inordinate amount of media attention has been focused on Jewish issues: much of this attention is unfortunately negative. The reaction to a recent report by a Montreal police committee that issued "cultural advice" to improve community policing is especially instructive. In the report, a cultural advisor from the police department suggested that in cases where police had to intervene in Orthodox Jewish communities (something that is in any case rare), male police officers talk to Orthodox men and that female officers address Orthodox women so as to show sensitivity to religious customs. As far as I could tell, the report simply intended to make community policing more effective - it was not triggered by any refusal on the part of Orthodox men to speak to female police officers. Nevertheless, the lines of French-language talk shows in Montreal were jammed by callers complaining about the alleged refusal of Jews to conform to Quebec's "tolerant" values and the whole affair was cast as a surrender by the Montreal police to sexist demands by the Jewish community.

Another Montreal Jewish School Firebombed

Berel Weiss, director of the Toldos Yakov Yosef of Skver
Yeshiva, inspects the damage to the school

A masked young man threw a molotov cocktail into the vestibule of a Hasidic boys' school in Outremont, on Saturday morning. A group of kids had left the building shortly before the attack
took place, so that no one was injured, thank God. The damages are estimated at more than $100,000. Police have been hesitant to call the attack a hate crime until now; they are waiting for more evidence. In April 2004, the United Talmud Torahs School in Montreal, not far from our parents' apartment, was burnt to the ground. Sleiman El-Merhebi, the teenage perpetrator of that attack, was released from prison in May 2005, after serving two thirds of a 40-month sentence for arson. His mother, Rouba El-Merhebi Faud, is about to go on trial on charges of being an accessory to the crime after the fact (see National Post for coverage) .

Montreal is home to one of Canada's largest Jewish communities, which includes a significant Hasidic segment. The response of the provincial government so far has been somewhat tepid. Quebec minister of immigration and cultural communities, Lise Theriault, said that the attack “should be treated as an isolated incident for the moment." Government officials were wary of calling it a hate crime, until further progress is made in the investigation; on Tuesday, police said that they had no new clues since the attack took place. Theriault explained that “nobody has found a note, there was no graffiti either.” She did add that “The act that was committed was reprehensible. The person who did it cannot go unpunished.... There’s no place for something like this in Quebec." She also said something that left a strange taste in my mouth : “It’s very unfortunate.... we know that the Jewish community, notably, is well-integrated” (Montreal Gazette).

Actually, the victims of this attack are not "well-integrated" - certainly not by the standards of most Quebecois. How exactly is that relevant? Yes, the Jewish community as a whole is well-integrated; but if it weren't, would the attack have been any less unfortunate? I am hoping she was simply misquoted or said this without thinking.

Rabbi Reuben Poupko, who serves on Montreal's Jewish community security council, said it is legimate

to wonder whether or not the gathering of 15,000 Quebecers under the flag of Hezbollah, unfortunately further legitimized by the presence of politicians, whether that creates an atmosphere where fanatics draw the conclusion that violence against Jews is somehow acceptable (National Post).

Rabbi Poupko was referring to a march held earlier this summer, during Israel's campaign against Hizbullah. The protest drew several prominent politicians, including Gilles Duceppe, the leader of the separatist Bloc Québécois Party. Anyone who listens to French-language broadcasts in the province of Quebec or reads the newspapers here, knows that this is not the friendliest of places to Jews.

In other news, MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj, the (now, former) Liberal associate foreign affairs critic, recently resigned after comments he made on a fact-finding mission to southern Lebanon. On his trip, organized by National Council on Canada-Arab Relations (NCCAR), he allegedly "called Israel a terrorist state and suggested Hezbollah be removed as a banned terrorist organization"; Wrzesnewskyj later denied making the latter of these statements (Canadian Jewish News).

The Twists and Turns of Contemporary Antisemitism and Antisemites

In the past few weeks, I've been reading a blog (Blogging the Middle East) by a fascinating Lebanese thinker (Anarchorev a.k.a. Anarchistian), who also happens to be a self-confessed former racist, antisemite and Holocaust denier (see her remarkable "Confessions of an Ex-Neo-Nazi"). Even though I disagree with almost everything this blogger writes as well as her manner of expressing herself (her contempt for those who disagree with her line is always palpable), I admire this writer's political engagement and energy. The members of her cheering section are a little less interesting. As you can imagine, her blog also attracts its share of hardcore Jew-haters. I'm talking about people with no real connection to the Middle East who are nevertheless filled with pathological hatred of Israel and Jews. Of course, they'll also be the first ones to condemn you for accusing them of antisemitism - before you have even done so. In this post, I try to look a little more closely at some of the rhetoric employed by crypto-antisemites.

Before I begin, however, let me point to a major change in the history of antisemitism. Few antisemites today want to be known as such. Unlike their predecessors, today's antisemites realize that publicly confessing to antisemitism - something which the inventors of the term did proudly - will delegitimize them to the point of no return, at least in the West. Furthermore, although there are still plenty of Holocaust deniers around, including presidents of certain countries, denial of the genocide of European Jewry is a taboo in most of the civilized world. This is an unfortunate situation for those who hate Jews and everything connected to them. Thus, antisemites have had to adjust to the new situation in which they found themselves after WWII.

One of the favorite devices of post-1945 antisemites has been to accuse Jews of conspiring to force the world to act according to the wishes of world Jewry by using the Holocaust as a sort of stick with which to beat non-Jews into submission. Thus, a few years ago, the German author, Martin Walser, referred to Jews as holding the "Auschwitz-Keule" (Auschwitz-club) over the heads of Germans. Thus, Jews are accused of exaggerating the genocide of European Jewry and manipulating the guilt complexes of non-Jews.

A related accusation to the one above is the charge that Jews deliberately minimize the suffering of others, sometimes in order to cover up their own horrendous crimes. This is a permutation of the classic anti-Jewish trope that accuses Jews of an especially heinous form of chauvinism because their religion includes the notion that they are the chosen people. Never mind that many other peoples entertain similar notions about themselves.

Another favorite device of contemporary antisemites is to accuse the Jews of being today's real Nazis. This is employed even by people who actually deny the Holocaust.

Let's look at some passages, which combine all the various devices. Here is an exchange on "Blogging the Middle East" between Anarchorev (formerly Anarchistian) and Chris Swift:

Swift writes:

What I would love to see is a naval and air blockade of Israel! How loud would they all scream and whine then?

(He likes to refer to "them" or "your kind" when speaking about Jews.)

Anarchorev responds:

What I would love to see is a naval and air blockade of Israel!
That would be the peak of anti-Semitism, wouldn’t it? …. :)

This really sets off the "discussion." Swift writes back:

Yes, it certainly must be. I mean, after all, to condemn the policies of Israel means you’re an anti-semite.

The problem with playing the “anti-semite” card (and I appreciate your sarcastic wit, Anarchorev) - the problem with this is that it is now…boring. They have sucked all the sympathy out of me that they’re going to get for the Holocaust. There have been so many tv specials and movies and newspaper articles, that I’ve now reached a saturation point. I am now anesthetized to it. I now officially do not care about the Holocaust. Of all the massacres and barbarian tragedies that have happened over time, it seems we are only allowed to “know” or “care” about the Jewish Holocaust (which affected untold numbers of non-Jews also [but we’re not supposed to know about that, are we?]). I do not care how many Jews died in WWII. It happened. Get over it. And stop using it as a weapon. It’s boring.

And although I’m not quite prepared to make the “Jews are the New Nazis” analogy (at least until George “where are our assassins when we need them” Bush starts selling Israel stocks of Zyclon-B), it is very interesting and curious how many direct comparisons can be made between official statements of Nazi officials and Israeli officials - justifying their actions. Curious, indeed. (I won’t delineate them here; I think we know what they are.)

It's funny that Swift first explains his indifference vis-a-vis the Holocaust as a product of anaesthesis through over-exposure. "They" no longer merit his sympathy, because "they" have been on TV too much already. Then, he shifts gears and suggests that the fact that "they" have received so much exposure is due to a conspiracy on "their" part to monopolize suffering. "They" are not letting him care about non-Jewish victims! Next, he jumps to a different register again - pure callousness. "It happened. Get over it." Or, "It's boring."

The second paragraph is "interesting and curious" in its own right. Well, not really. It's just dumb. He's not really prepared to make the analogy but then does so anyway.

At the risk of boring Kishkushim readers, I want to look at the trajectory that the discussion took from there. Tanya, another reader, expands on Swift's accusation that the Jews monopolize suffering. She accuses Jews, in somewhat veiled terms, of monopolizing the term antisemitism. Her comment is basically a version of a classic argument used by Arab antisemites and their apologists. The argument is that since Arabs "are Semites" (indeed, the claim is that they are the “real Semites,” unlike the fake Ashkenazi Jews), they cannot be antisemites. Here is Tanya's post:

it needs to be clarified where the term ‘ANTI-SEMITISM’ derives from: ‘SAMI’ the people who descended from ‘SAMI’, son of ‘NOAH’ in arabia. this applies to the arabs of the region who are ‘SAMI’ or ‘SEMI’, which includes jewish, muslim and christian arabs. this does not apply to
non-arabs.

the word ‘SEMI’ has been taken out of context and manipulated to apply to only one religion, THIS IS WRONG, however, this has been done deliberately so serve a purpose.

Swift responds:

Tanya,
Yes, indeed. The term covers a wide range of peoples and, for some reason or other, seems to apply only to Jews now!? It’s basically a non-sequitur. What the heck happened there?

The term covers a wide range of peoples? It’s a non-sequitur? Obviously, the best solution to the whole antisemitism problem is to eliminate the term entirely. That way, one no longer has to worry about saying antisemitic things about “them.” The true crime is not antisemitism, but the attempts by Jews to deny the true meaning of the term. Never mind that the term antisemitism was invented by a proud German Jew-hater in the 1870s called Wilhelm Marr for whom Semite meant Jew (he coined the word to give German anti-Jewish prejudice a more “scientific” – i.e., racial – foundation). Never mind, that if one looks at usage of the term by antisemites since then, it has almost always been with reference to Jews and not to Arabs. Never mind that the Nazis’ avowed antisemitism did not prevent the Mufti Haj al Amin from becoming very friendly with them. Given the historical record, Tanya’s claim that “this does not apply to non-Arabs” is of course utter nonsense.

Tanya’s comment is deeply problematic for a host of other reasons. First of all, she really seems to believe that there is such a thing as a “Semitic” race or group of people. Yes, SHEM was one of the sons of Noah, but the terms “Semite” and “Semites” are products of the racist European imagination of the late 18th and 19th centuries. The designation only makes sense in linguistics, where we can speak of Semitic languages such as Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Amharic. There are no people called “Semites” unless you believe in racial science.

Finally, it is surely the height of chutzpah that Tanya and Swift blame JEWS for monopolizing the term antisemitism. As if Jews are responsible for the fact that antisemites have used the term “Semite” almost exclusively to mean Jews.

"What the heck happened there?"

Strange Reaction to the Seattle Shooting

Medics Evacuate the Wounded (Seattle, not Israel)

It finally happened. On Friday, a gunman penetrated the Jewish Federation building in downtown Seattle and opened fire on people inside, killing one woman and seriously injuring five others, some of whom are in critical condition. Naveed Afzal Haq, an American citizen of Pakistani descent, apparently identified himself as an American Muslim “angered by Israel.” The FBI believes that he acted alone and does not belong to any terrorist organizations. It is possible that the attacker was a mentally unstable individual; his police record indicates a prior charge for lewd conduct. Most American Muslim organizations immediately condemned the terror attack. Nevertheless, there have been a few isolated reactions that deserve some scrutiny. I was a bit baffled, for example, to read the following statement by Ziyad Zaitoun, a 52-year-old civil engineer taking part in a protest against Israel’s operation in Lebanon, who was quoted in the Seattle Times:

"[A]ny time something like this happens — especially against the state of Israel or people connected to the state of Israel — we fear for our lives" as Muslims, Zaitoun said.

There are some who claim that American and European Jews are alarmists who exaggerate threats to Jewish communities in the Diaspora in order to further pro-Israeli political agendas. Those who belittle threats against Jews and Jewish organizations, sometimes simultaneously insist that Muslims, in America, Europe, and the Middle East, are more deserving of “victim status.” Inevitably, the clamoring for victim status becomes a zero-sum game. After all, the perfect victim cannot also be a perpetrator. Furthermore, the argument for Muslim victim status sometimes turns into a corollary argument that Jews are the real perpetrators. Zaitoun’s statement plays on fears about a backlash against Muslims in America to insinuate that the state of Israel, Jewish organizations and their allies represent a mortal danger to American Muslims! This is a malicious and dangerous distortion. Zaitoun might be justified in dissociating Muslim Americans as a whole from the attack (though the reality is that there are some in the North American Muslim communities who do incite attacks against Jews). But his insinuation could also justify further attacks, as it implies that Jews are threatening Muslim lives.

It was also bizarre to read that

Seattle police were protecting temples and mosques Saturday after a suspected hate killing prompted fears of the Middle East crisis spreading to the United States (CNN).

Muslim extremists in Canada, the US, and Europe have attacked Jews and Jewish institutions in the past. In doing so, they have indeed spread the means used by terrorists in the Middle East to North America and Western Europe. But it is simply misleading to suggest that the “Middle East crisis [is] spreading to the United States.” This statement implies that there has been some kind of parallel Jewish response, and that American Jewish groups and individuals are gearing up to launch attacks on mosques or Muslim community centers. In fact, American Jewish organizations, perhaps because of their long experience in battling hate crimes, have been very vocal in speaking out against attacks on Muslims institutions and the marginalization of Muslim Americans.