Criticising Israel: A Guide for Non-Racists

I have had more than one person state, as though they were saying something original and clever:

"But its not Anti-Semitic to criticize Israel!"

Which is totally fair enough.

Of course, there are many legitimate criticisms of Israel to be made!

Some of the most poignant, and specific criticisms come from print media originating with the Israeli press itself, like Ha'aretz, for example. They know whereof they speak, and they tell it how they see it. I have read very strong criticisms of the Israeli State that I would call excellent journalism, and I think it is an important thing that nations are held accountable for their actions.

But to put it simply: Of course not every Israel Critic is a Jew-Hater. But many a Jew-Hater IS an Israel Critic, and plenty hide behind that label.

I suggest that legitimate criticism of Israel has most of the following attributes:

1. It relates to specific events, the account of which is supported by evidence.
2. It makes specific criticisms and opposes specific policies and people, rather than sweeping condemnation of an entire country or all Jews in the world.
3. It avoids gross generalizations about Jewish character, such as "greedy" "thieving" "money loving" and all the other straight-up racist attributions that seem to get under the radar these days. It defines terms like Zionist, and respects the usual meaning of the terms that it applies to people.
4. It tells both sides of the story. For example, the tragedy of Palestinian dispossession does not mean that there is only one side to the story. The expulsion of a million Jews from Arab lands needs mentioning, since it happened at the same time, to greater numbers of people, than the Palestinian tragedy. The context does nothing to lessen the tragedy to the Palestinians, but helps to lead people to demand a fair solution for both parties; one-sided narratives lead to demonetization of the other side, and help not at all.
5. It does not engage in the deliberate falsification facts about the Jewish people. The repetition of persistent propaganda, such as the Blood Libel, the Khazar Theory, which holds that modern Jews are all "fake" and have no links to the Middle east, the falsification of history about the killing of Jewish people in WW2- these things are straight up Racist falsehoods, and need to be decried as such. Legitimate criticism has no room for this.
6. It uses meaningful analogies. For e.g: If one was to compare the Israeli fight against Palestine with the fight of Russia against the Chechens, it allows meaningful parallels to be drawn, and serious questions raised about the acceptability of civilian deaths in such conflicts. It involved an Islamic militant group within a civilian population opposing the rule of a more powerful state that had occupied the territory.  This is a helpful analogy. Comparing Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto, by contrast, is not so useful. The Germans imported people to the Ghetto by train from various bits of Europe into an area 1/100th the size of Gaza, then deported and gassed 7000 inmates of the ghetto per week, from a population of 400,000, such that shortly the entire population was dead. If the Israelis had pursued such a policy, the entire population of Palestine would have been killed in 26 months, and extinct by the spring of 1951. The analogy is not meant to inform, it is meant to demonize, and it is not legitimate.
7. The use of the terms Nazi and Fascist to describe the Jewish state are similarly not meant to be informative. The Palestinian leadership at the time of Israel's foundation were in fact legitimate Fascists, as the Mufti of Jerusalem had spent WW2 in Berlin, met Hitler, and had been part of the Waffen SS. He visited extermination camps, and agreed (in writing) to assist in the murder of Palestine's existing Jewish population if the Axis powers had won the war. Throwing this term at an Israeli is calculated to anger and demonize the Jew or Israeli Arab it is used against, and is historically quite offensive. Israel is a democracy, and has over a million Arab and Muslim citizens, who can vote, trade, serve in the Army and stand for elections like any other citizen. There have been Arabs in positions as high as the Vice President in the government of Israel, and there are Black, Muslim, Christian and Thai people in government roles. It is not likely that Nazi Germany would have made a Jew or a Black person the Vice President of the Third Reich, I respectfully suggest, and there are more appropriate terms to describe a democratic state that has get itself involved in a dubious conflict.
8. If it must delve into the Legitimacy of the Israeli state, it uses fair context, and does not create narratives that rely on selectively edited histories.
For example, suggesting that the partition of the British Mandate to create a Jewish homeland was unprecedented and cruel is possible only if neglecting the context of the partition of Pakistan, which created a Muslim homeland in Hindu India, in the same decades, also in a previously British dominion. The partition of Jordan from the Mandate of Palestine is also significant, as the creation of Jordan reduced Palestine by far more area than the creation of Israel did. This gives historical context. It is not a simple story of Greedy Jews From Europe Came and Stole Everything, and those who limit the narrative to such are being dishonest.
9. Be honest about Hamas. These guys are not characters out of a Victor Hugo novel, no matter how much French Existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre would like them to be swarthy archetypes of Jean Val Jean, with headscarves instead of Tricolor. Discuss their Charter, and insist they clarify their position on killing Jews. As in, all of them, all over the world. Because that is really not cool, and makes it very hard to be friends.  

So. Be specific, avoid repeating modern reiterations of old racist propaganda, give historical context, and be fair.

That's it, really.

Oh....and don't be a fuck-wit like Leunig, and use literary allusions to call Israel a Nazi state, without ever coming out and saying it. Really, don't do that. "And then they came for me...sniff, sniff..."

Get your hand off it, mate.

It's not cool. Even if you draws awesome ducks.

What one Atheist believes

Can I say that I believe in God?

(I was asked, by someone who seemed to think that was important.)

Can I define God as Einstein and Spinoza did?

What?

Well then I can, actually, I can.

What I mean, and what they meant by "God" is the creative potential of the Universe, excluding nothing. Every particle of matter, every quantum of energy. The physical laws that give order to the Universe, written in the fabric of matter itself.

That I believe in, because I cannot know it all, I believe in it. This kind of God is all around us. Within us. Is us.

With this kind of god, there is and can be no priest, no holy book. We reason our way to understanding; must experiment, observe, and proceed with the intellectual humility of knowing that sometimes a new experiment will fill in details that we didn't expect, and erase things that we thought we knew.

And every now and again, a pillar will fall, as new research undermines it.  We will flinch and fear a rock fall, and the Dome of Science will show us once again that the span of it's arch is greater than Plato, greater than Newton, greater than Einstein; it will stay up, even as we shovel out ignorance with all the tools that we build.

The weird tribe of scientists and engineers will keep excavating the rubble out of the Cathedral that was our ignorance, leaving more and more room for our knowledge of the world. And we will see the majesty of this Universe, this Cathedral of un-created wonder, as more superstition, and more fear, and more ignorance are shoveled out of our future, into our history.

To me, this makes understanding science a kind of religious obligation. It makes learning a spiritual journey. It makes the life and death of stars and galaxies somehow personal, and makes the personal tragedies and triumphs of us little creatures seem less cosmic. We are part of this God, and never, for a second, are we separated from this.

This kind of Faith places greater demands of those that hold it than a faith of Supernatural miracles and an eternal Afterlife. As we get just one shot at this, we need to get it right.

There is no eternity of cloud-sitting to tell our loved ones that we love them. No recourse to good intentions. We need to show our respect and love today.

Our dog knows we love him when we take him for walks, and show affection in the tactile, physical way that canine species appreciate. I have no idea how to please a cat, as they seem not to like me. I try not to take it personally.

The only meaningful way to show affection for the natural world is by preserving habitat and reducing waste; there is no Personal God looking inside your mind to see what you intended; an endangered species understands only the kind of gestures that allow it to survive. Intentions, good or bad, are quite perfectly meaningless to any species that does not know us well enough to forgive. (Dogs know when we didn't mean to step on them, and accept our apologies. Not sure about Cats, I think they plot revenge. Rain-forests just don't understand us at all.)

So what I am getting at, is that we have to speak to people, to animals, and to the natural world in the language that they understand. This means verbal and physical respect and affection toward humans, physical affection and care towards animals that are the friends of our species, and appropriate regard for the welfare of animals and ecosystems that are wild, or even a bit pestilential.

Its a physical morality, from physical souls.

And I think Spirituality exists too, in its way. When we die, those who remember us, can still hear our voices. They can still feel the warmth of our affections, or the hurt of our wrongs. The consequences of our actions linger. Our thoughts linger on paper.

These fossils of our thoughts are impressed into the world, and into other minds.

The Beatitudes of Jesus of Nazareth, the works of Brahms, the words of William Shakespeare and the Epic of Gilgamesh speak to us; the thoughts of one mind, shine out into the future as long as there are people who understand.

So, while i reject the Supernatural, to the greatest extent possible, I can say that I do have a spiritual life. Hope for the future. And a God, into whose oneness I will dissolve when my time comes.

One who will create new life, out of the matter that used to be me. The matter that used to be stars, and which I was lucky enough to have at my command for a little while, in this most improbable of worlds.

Much love.

Brett

I have been here in Nuremberg, Germany, for the past couple of months. 

It's a place where history has a way of following you around, especially if you have the kind of memory that catches hold of shapes. 

I walk across a market square, and feel intense deja vu.  And it dawns suddenly: Of course I know this market. I have seen it on a dozen news-reels, filled with buxom girls in dirndls and strong men in boots, who for some reason are pleased to see a small angry man with a mustache.  

And there is no way around this but through. I know there were eagles chiseled off the hotel across the street, and I know that the Fraunekirche is built on the foundations of a burned synagogue, and the Hauptmarkt lies over the ruins of the Ghetto. 

There is no pretending this city is a saint. There is a rough  history here, it has prior form for everything from animal cruelty to stealing Art. All I can say in the city's defense, is that there was a lot of peer pressure, and it was a pretty fucked up party, the early 20th century. Shit happens when highly organized people get high. 

So I have taken a month to look at Nuremberg. To relax into it. I DIG certain things about it. Transport planning, the Fascists actually rocked at that. And the buildings just work. There is something wholesome about orderly societies, that keep things in order. It provides the potential for serious endeavors to get into motion, like the Solar initiative: Germany as a first mover, provided the capital and the scale for the early solar industry to grow into a competitive business. No-one else was willing to do that. A+, Germans. 

So I'm loving on it, for what there is to love, dealing with the past as it comes up, without deliberately looking for something to take exception to, 'cos life's too short, right? 

And I do have a thing for the well-built girls in dirndls carrying beer. So un-subtle,  but so awesome, like the 4 story houses with sensibly located windows and large sections of timber as architectural highlights. 

No way is it surprising, but it works. I really just does. 

I think that is what this culture is all about. You find A way, not necessarily THE way, but you find something that works pretty well and then you just do it better, and better, until is it is as smooth as glass. 

Its all right. 

I do sincerely believe that German culture has a role to play in the world. The world needs it. Not just nice cars with angry headlights, and good power tools, the mercantile and civic culture that makes all this possible. It ain't bad. 

I think that one of the most splendid confidence tricks of all history has been played on the West.  I say ONE of, because the great  Man in the Sky con of the late Bronze Age still holds the title, but this one  alsorates.

It is audacious in its scope and marvelous in it's simplicity. I would call it, Can't Buy Me Love.

In essence: We have agreed, somehow, to buy our dreams back, from people who do not have them to sell to us.

There is of course, much in this world to be bought, and rightly so. We need shoes for our feet, clothes for our backs and rubber for our wheels. I see no mischief in this kind of transaction. Nor do I see anything wrong with an advert that says: here are good tyres, good shoes, good shirts. We need them, and we should be grateful to the unseen hands that work hard to make them for us.

What makes me stare in wonder is the way that we pay money for goods, when what we crave is closeness to other human beings.