Forbidden to Me
There are two areas that perhaps in the weblog world someone like me may be forbidden to enter. One involves Jews and the other has to do with homosexuality.
It's my impression that other people with weblogs rarely talk about anything connected with Jews and Israel. Has something placed that subject out of bounds even for them, namely the way that almost anything a person might say sooner or later seems to end up with that person being accused of being anti-semitic? Even the hard-bitten Bartcop shies away from the subject because of that likelihood -- and admits it.
I find Jews, Palestinians, and that whole Israel situation to be intensely interesting and important, and it is not only worthy of but also actually requires consideration and even (gulp!) debate.
As for homosexuality, the issues there have always been difficult for me to decipher, and the vestiges of the accompanying fear have been slow to fade, though they're about gone now. Still, what can I possibly have to say on that subject either?
Actually I have several things to say, as we all do on any topic that stirs our minds. This is the wonderful weblog world, and in it we are permitted and expected to speak on anything that interests us, and, best of all, because it is a world purely of our own opinions, in it none of us is any more or less of an "expert" than anyone else.
I mentioned the off-limits situation involving Jews because of my attitude about conditions in and around Israel. I think that nearly everything that the Israelis are doing and are permitting under A. Sharon is a ghastly mistake.
That sort of attitude is highly unpopular, since a lot of people seem to be convinced that the Palestinians are all suicide bombers and terrorists and deserve all the punishment that the Israelis are dealing out to them. But, in the short term though not in the long, the Palestinians are the underdogs, and underdogs usually occupy the high moral ground, and I was born an underdog. So that is where my sympathies tend to lean.
Yet I also have a lot of concern for the Israelis. Following the unimaginably horrible (I wanted to say "unprecedented" but it wasn't unprecedented) persecution and annihilation of Jews in Germany and in the countries that the Germans invaded back in the 1930's and 40's, it's entirely reasonable that Jews should have a headquarters, a place in which large numbers of them can gather and even live, if they should so choose, in safety. (I avoid using the word "homeland." That sounds too much like "fatherland," a term that was so much a favorite of the Nazis that they not only ruined it for good but also did nearly the same to all the other concepts in its vicinity.)
I am often naive, and I admit that. Yet I can't help feeling that, to that end, it ought to have been possible, in 1948 and for some years afterward, for something to be worked out in a less contentious manner. Instead it may not look that way, but as things stand now it looks to me as if the Israelis are definitely behind the guff. This was probably not so in the beginning, but I very much fear that the way they have gone about trying to consolidate their hold has resulted in getting both feet clamped in a big, powerful bear trap of their own making.
There's no question that Jews have made contributions to human achievement out of all proportion to their numbers, and in all or at least most generations they've had great thinkers. Yet it is also true that they're no different from Palestinians and every other group on the planet in having too many individuals, often in high places, with their heads badly out of wack. This has been especially noticeable in the present era, when a number of opportunists among them have bought into a U.S. political party that is rooted in repression and short-sightedness -- the presentday Republicans. That has created a ping-pong effect between the highest echelons of government of the U.S. and Israel, with no one keeping their eyes on the ball. So if, in the Washington of GWBush and the Jerusalem of A. Sharon, and in the several Arab capitals as well, there's any vision of a pleasant future for the Israelis and their Arab neighbors, along with a workable and humane means and the sincere intent of achieving the same, it is being kept carefully concealed.
It's my impression that other people with weblogs rarely talk about anything connected with Jews and Israel. Has something placed that subject out of bounds even for them, namely the way that almost anything a person might say sooner or later seems to end up with that person being accused of being anti-semitic? Even the hard-bitten Bartcop shies away from the subject because of that likelihood -- and admits it.
I find Jews, Palestinians, and that whole Israel situation to be intensely interesting and important, and it is not only worthy of but also actually requires consideration and even (gulp!) debate.
As for homosexuality, the issues there have always been difficult for me to decipher, and the vestiges of the accompanying fear have been slow to fade, though they're about gone now. Still, what can I possibly have to say on that subject either?
Actually I have several things to say, as we all do on any topic that stirs our minds. This is the wonderful weblog world, and in it we are permitted and expected to speak on anything that interests us, and, best of all, because it is a world purely of our own opinions, in it none of us is any more or less of an "expert" than anyone else.
I mentioned the off-limits situation involving Jews because of my attitude about conditions in and around Israel. I think that nearly everything that the Israelis are doing and are permitting under A. Sharon is a ghastly mistake.
That sort of attitude is highly unpopular, since a lot of people seem to be convinced that the Palestinians are all suicide bombers and terrorists and deserve all the punishment that the Israelis are dealing out to them. But, in the short term though not in the long, the Palestinians are the underdogs, and underdogs usually occupy the high moral ground, and I was born an underdog. So that is where my sympathies tend to lean.
Yet I also have a lot of concern for the Israelis. Following the unimaginably horrible (I wanted to say "unprecedented" but it wasn't unprecedented) persecution and annihilation of Jews in Germany and in the countries that the Germans invaded back in the 1930's and 40's, it's entirely reasonable that Jews should have a headquarters, a place in which large numbers of them can gather and even live, if they should so choose, in safety. (I avoid using the word "homeland." That sounds too much like "fatherland," a term that was so much a favorite of the Nazis that they not only ruined it for good but also did nearly the same to all the other concepts in its vicinity.)
I am often naive, and I admit that. Yet I can't help feeling that, to that end, it ought to have been possible, in 1948 and for some years afterward, for something to be worked out in a less contentious manner. Instead it may not look that way, but as things stand now it looks to me as if the Israelis are definitely behind the guff. This was probably not so in the beginning, but I very much fear that the way they have gone about trying to consolidate their hold has resulted in getting both feet clamped in a big, powerful bear trap of their own making.
There's no question that Jews have made contributions to human achievement out of all proportion to their numbers, and in all or at least most generations they've had great thinkers. Yet it is also true that they're no different from Palestinians and every other group on the planet in having too many individuals, often in high places, with their heads badly out of wack. This has been especially noticeable in the present era, when a number of opportunists among them have bought into a U.S. political party that is rooted in repression and short-sightedness -- the presentday Republicans. That has created a ping-pong effect between the highest echelons of government of the U.S. and Israel, with no one keeping their eyes on the ball. So if, in the Washington of GWBush and the Jerusalem of A. Sharon, and in the several Arab capitals as well, there's any vision of a pleasant future for the Israelis and their Arab neighbors, along with a workable and humane means and the sincere intent of achieving the same, it is being kept carefully concealed.
posted by Carl (aka Sofarsogoo) | 8:29 AM
2 Comments:
I'm so glad you broached the subject of Jews and Israel. I have very strong feelings on the subject, but just can't find the words to articulate them.
And it's such a highly charged subject - bound up in feelings of Holocaust guilt, anti-Semitism or fear of seeming so, religion - you name it. To blog the situation is to invite not only debate, but vicious mudslinging.
Ariel Sharon is the worst thing to happen to Israel since it's founding; of that I'm certain. Israel was founded not only to provide a refuge for world Jewry, but on very noble principles of democracy and the highest moral values. Sharon has made a total mockery of Israel's foundation.
I agree with you totally, Andante.
I don't think I'm in much danger of having mud slung my way. I'm still too invisible!
Over there in the Middle East they've been going at it hot and heavy and with few pauses since the year I became an adult, 56 years ago. Are they prepared to extend the eye for an eye thing into centuries and even millennia? It would be interesting to know what their expectations are.
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