Letters From a Young Contrarian

I found this short documentary over the weekend, and feel it...

Mon, 20 May 2013 17:00:52 +0100

I found this short documentary over the weekend, and feel it aptly demonstrates the internal debate which occurred within the Kibbutz Movement during the 1990s over the nature and necessity of capitalistic reforms.

After 1985 and Israel’s programme of economic stabilisation, the country as a whole implemented market-oriented reforms in a bid to tackle inflation and soaring debts. As part of this, the kibbutzim — which for decades had been loss-making enterprises, subsided by various Labor governments — were forced into two rounds of debt negotiations with then-Likudnik governments. As part of the restructuring process and in order to survive and meet the demands placed upon as regards repayment, many kibbutzim underwent processes of privatisation to introduce forms of capitalism to the kibbutz while seeking to retain its socialist character. This included the sale of land, the privatisation of industrial enterprises, and the introduction of hard currency to be spent in communal facilities such as the dining hall, laundrette, and convenience store.

This documentary reflects that debate, as well as the generational conflict attached to it, particular the apathy expresses towards kibbutz life by younger members would wished to see the pace of reform quickened.

The strange disappearance of Joseph Massad

Mon, 20 May 2013 15:00:36 +0100

Last week, I commented on Columbia professor Joseph Massad’s essay in al-Jazeera, “The Last of the Semites”:

[Massad’s] essay — of that length by virtue of the fact that no-one seems to have thought to edit it down — hinges on that old idea that Zionism is racism. In this case, Massad applies this cliché not just in the usual way to indicate prejudice towards non-Jews. No, he believes Zionism is explicitly anti-Semitic. Zionism, according to Massad, emerged not as a response to European anti-Semitism but in sympathy with its racialist precepts.

Since last Tuesday, prominent journalists including Jeffrey Goldberg, John Podhoretz, and James Kirchick picked up on Massad’s piece and shared it about for all to see, while my critique was mentioned in media outlets like The Jerusalem Post and The Washington Free Beacon (a magazine I don’t believe I would appear in under ordinary circumstances — Bill Kristol doesn’t strike me as a Meretz guy). Well, as of yesterday, Massad’s essay is no longer available, it having been taken down from the web by al-Jazeera without explanation or notice.

And this is exactly the wrong thing for al-Jazeera to have done. First, denying people the right to read this disgraceful, unlettered essay also denies people the right to find out just what a horrible little man Joseph Massad is — which, is a useful public service for al-Jazeera to be engaging in. Second, if al-Jazeera feels it made a bad call by lending its imprimatur to the original work unedited (which, by removing it, is evidently the case), they should be made to pay for that mistake. Either, they should have kept it up on the website with an addendum, or if they absolutely had to take it down, they should have provided a note with reasoning for why exactly Massad’s essay was palatable to them on Tuesday but spoilt by Sunday. The current situation is unsatisfactory for supporters and opponents of Massad’s screed.

I mention supporters, because in spite of (or more likely as a direct result of) the backlash against Massad’s article, those residing on the fringes of the debate have felt the need to come out and defend it. Ali Abunimah — hero and saviour of the Jewish people — stated:

The backlash has been so intense precisely because Massad goes to the core of Israel’s claim to represent Jews and to cast its critics as anti-Semites by showing that indeed it is Israel and Zionism that partake of the same anti-Semitism that targeted European Jews.

In doing so, Massad pulls the rug from under Zionists and Israel lobbyists by demonstrating that they are the anti-Semites and taking away the most formidable weapon they wield against critics of Israel: the accusation that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.

By neutralizing this ideological weapon that Israel has used so effectively in the Western media to cover up its colonization of Palestine, Massad’s pro-Jewish position and strenuous attack on Zionist anti-Semitism is clearly understood by Israel lobby figures such as Goldberg as a complete obliteration of their ideological arsenal.

Abunimah has said stuff like this before, and it wasn’t terribly interesting then, just as he’s called Goldberg “President Barack Obama’s favourite Israel lobby gatekeeper and former Israeli prison guard” in that at once slimy and slightly tedious fashion. What would be interesting, however, is if Abunimah made clear whether he endorses the article in its totality, including Massad’s charming thesis (and this is not to mischaracterise it) that all of Europe’s good Jews were the ones that did not heed to call to make aliya and died in the Holocaust, and the Zionist Jews who made it to Palestine and survived were (and are) bad Jews. Abunimah doesn’t say otherwise in his all-in defence of Massad. What are we supposed to think?

#Eurovision2013

Mon, 20 May 2013 13:00:38 +0100

So Denmark won the Eurovision Song Contest. And it was a good song, so congratulations to them. When it comes to an overall winner of Eurovision, I don’t mind who wins, pretty much. I only request that who’s picked isn’t embarrassing for the sake of the contest. No Romanian castrati, for example, or moustachioed Greeks dishing out free alcohol.

But I do have my preferences, and these were my top five on the night:

1. Anouk, “Birds” (The Netherlands, 9th, 114pts)

2. Robin Stjernberg, “You” (Sweden, 14th, 62pts)

3. Birgit, “Et uus saaks alguse” (Estonia, 20th, 19pts)

4. Gianluca, “Tomorrow” (Malta, 8th, 120pts)

5. Dina Garipova, “What If” (Russia, 5th, 174pts)

OVER THE WEEKEND: Howe warns Tories over Europe; Homophobic murder in New York; Denmark wins Eurovision

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:00:34 +0100

Geoffrey Howe warned David Cameron that he is losing control of his party over Europe, damaging the country in the process. [The Guardian]
Victims of Cardinal Keith O’Brien alleged sexual molestation condemned the Vatican’s decision to permit him to leave Scotland for prayer and penance. [The Guardian]
In New York, Mark Carson was murdered Friday night in a homophobic hate crime, just blocks from the Stonewall Inn. [The New York Times]
Thomas Friedman visited north-eastern Syria, reporting on how water shortages and ossification in government begat political and civil unrest. [The New York Times]
Daniel Ben Simon reported on the efforts by secular and religious Israelis to regenerate the deprived, mixed city of Lod. [Al-Monitor]
Denmark won the Eurovision Song Contest. “Only Teardrops”, performed by Emmilie de Forest, scored 281 points, beating out Azeribaijan and the Ukraine. [BBC]
On the final day of the Premier League season, Aston Villa drew 2-2 with already-relegated Wigan away from home. Villa finished the season in 15th place with 41 points. [BBC]

The winning song:

THE WEEK THAT WAS (13-17/05/2013)

Fri, 17 May 2013 21:35:38 +0100

This week, I countered Joseph Massad’s essay in al-Jazeera, which argued that Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism akin to Nazism.

As Shelly Yachimovich pressed Israel and the Palestinians to renew peace talks, the Netanyahu government approved four new settlements beyond the Security Barrier. This Wednesday was also Shavuot in Israel.

My essential musical this week was Kander & Ebb’s The Act, while with the Eurovision Song Contest coming up on Saturday, I picked my favourite winners since ABBA in 1974.

It's that time again: Eurovision!

Fri, 17 May 2013 13:24:24 +0100

Every year it disappoints me, yet every year I return. And once more, the Eurovision Song Contest is upon us. For the uninitiated (though I can’t imagine there are that many people unaware of exactly what this affair entails), I have selected some of my favourite Eurovision winners from ABBA to Loreen, both of whom are Swedish, by coincidence I presume. My selection indicate two things: first, that Eurovision had a kind of musical peak between 1974 and 1982; and second, I started watching Eurovision after 1997, and in spite of the overall decline in quality, I keep doing so.

ABBA, “Waterloo” (Sweden, 1974)

Marie Myriam, “L’oiseau and l’enfant” (France, 1977)

Izhar Cohen and the Alphabeta, “A-Ba-Ni-Bi” (Israel, 1978)

Johnny Logan, “What’s Another Year”(Ireland, 1980)

Nicole, “Ein Bisschen Frieden” (Germany, 1982)

Katrina and the Waves, “Love Shine a Light” (United Kingdom, 1997)

Dana International, “Diva” (Israel, 1998)

Olsen Brothers, “Fly on the Wings of Love” (Denmark, 2000)

Alexander Rybak, “Fairytale” (Norway, 2009)

Lena, “Satellite” (Germany, 2010)

Loreen, “Euphoria” (Sweden, 2012)

ESSENTIAL MUSICAL #16: THE ACT In the post-Rodgers &...

Thu, 16 May 2013 15:21:00 +0100

ESSENTIAL MUSICAL #16: THE ACT

In the post-Rodgers & Hammerstein era, John Kander and Fred Ebb’s contribution to American musical theatre should be considered in the same breath as those of Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein and Jule Styne.

The music of John Kander has an instantly recognisable sound, while Kander and Ebb’s shows at their most successful explore (as I have previously argued) uniquely dark political and sexual themes, focusing in on characters that reside on the margins of society: cabaret girls in Weimar Germany; murderesses in Prohibition-era Chicago; political prisoners in Latin America. This is also the case with The Act. While not as ambitious or successful as Chicago, Cabaret, or Kiss of the Spider Woman, through Michelle Craig — the protagonist of the piece — Kander and Ebb examine the life of a faded, washed-up, lonely movie star, trying to make a comeback as a Las Vegas singer.

Lyrically and structurally, The Act helps highlights the marked difference that exists between the songs of Fred Ebb and Stephen Sondheim. Sondheim (to speak generally) uses break for song in musicals in order to advance the plot, so in other words the character is in a different place at the end of the song when compared to its beginning. Ebb, on the other hand, seems to use song to focus in on one particularly funny or emotional idea, and then augment it, largely through repetition or expansion.

Examples of this include “The Grass Is Always Greener” from Woman of the Year, where a housewife and a TV star sing back and forth about how one person’s life is better than the other, and “The Apple Doesn’t Fall (Very Far From the Tree)” from The Rink, this time with mother and daughter sharing the traits that make them similar. This particular technique is prominent in The Act, too. The conceit of “The Money Tree” is noted in the title: that love will come when the sky turns black and there’s a money tree, an idea that is repeated myriad ways. And, in “City Lights”, urban-rural tension and the notion that the city is better than the country is said about twenty different ways, if not more. Sties and stables sure are smelly, let me sniff some Kosher deli, is my favourite.

Another slap in the face from Netanyahu

Thu, 16 May 2013 11:00:15 +0100

From Peace Now:

Following a rumoured freeze, and Secretary Kerry’s continuing efforts to launch negotiations, Israel announces intent to establish four new settlements by legalizing existing illegal outposts.

On Tuesday, the Government submitted a formal response to Peace Now’s Supreme Court petition against six illegal outposts. In the response the government declares its intention to legalize four outposts, in isolated areas.

The Civil Administration has been instructed to begin a process of legalizing the outposts of Ma’ale Rehavam, Haroeh, Givat Assaf, and Mitzpe Lachish. The former government had previously promised to remove the illegal construction built on private land, but had not declared its intention to legalize the outposts.

The Supreme Court will hold a hearing on the petition on Wednesday, May 22nd.

All of these proposed new settlements — retrospectively legalised ones — are located outside of the Security Barrier and beyond the boundary line drawn by the Geneva Initiative, both of which form the basis for a future border between Israel and Palestine to be finalised in negotiations. This move is, therefore, another slap in the face delivered by Benjamin Netanyahu to his coalition partners Yesh Atid and Hatnua, his few partners for peace in the Palestinian Authority, as well as Secretary of State John Kerry who has been working diligently in recent weeks to restart the peace process.

View New settlements (16/5) in a larger map

Joseph Massad's problem with rooted cosmopolitans

Tue, 14 May 2013 18:48:37 +0100

Joseph Massad’s op-ed, “The Last of the Semites”, demonstrates above all that the Columbia professor knows very little about not a lot.

His essay — of that length by virtue of the fact that no-one seems to have thought to edit it down — hinges on that old idea that Zionism is racism. In this case, Massad applies this cliché not just in the usual way to indicate prejudice towards non-Jews. No, he believes Zionism is explicitly anti-Semitic. Zionism, according to Massad, emerged not as a response to European anti-Semitism but in sympathy with its racialist precepts:

When Zionism started a decade and a half after Marr’s anti-Semitic programme was published, it would espouse all these anti-Jewish ideas, including scientific anti-Semitism as valid. For Zionism, Jews were “Semites”, who were descendants of the ancient Hebrews. In his foundational pamphlet Der Judenstaat, Herzl explained that it was Jews, not their Christian enemies, who “cause” anti-Semitism and that “where it does not exist, [anti-Semitism] is carried by Jews in the course of their migrations”.

Zionism, Massad thinks, was anti-Semitic not only of this reason but because it represented a “continuation of the Haskalah quest to shed Jewish culture and assimilate Jews into European secular gentile culture,” which of course is a total perversion of Jewish history and what Herzl actually thought and wrote.

In part, the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment, was related to assimilation but in the main it was an attempt to synthesis traditional Judaism with the modern ideas of the Enlightenment, including liberalism, nationalism, egality, and emancipation. Zionism emerged throughout the nineteenth century (not bang on 1897, as Massad understands it) as a product of this intellectual and cultural shift in the sense that its claim was that Jews are equal to all others and as deserving of statehood as anybody else. It is not, as Massad seems to think, some declaration of Jewish supremacy.

But it is also a by-product of the Haskalah: it is a reflection of the actual, lived Jewish experience in nineteenth-century Europe, and the waves of anti-Semitism that came with Jewish emancipation and entry into the professions from which Jews had previously been barred. Massad doesn’t seem to wish to acknowledge that anti-Semitism affected Jews in this way, at all.

Something else Massad doesn’t know very much about is Nazism:

The Nazis’ Final Solution initially meant the expulsion of Germany’s Jews to Madagascar. It is this shared goal of expelling Jews from Europe as a separate unassimilable race that created the affinity between Nazis and Zionists all along.

Did it? Did they? The road to Auschwitz is a long and twisted one, and the so-called Madagascar Plan was during that time examined by functionaries within the Nazi apparatus but not until the late 1930s and at no point was it near implementation. Indeed, by the time it was fully abandoned in late 1940, the process of destroying European Jewry in totality had commenced, with the concentration of Jews into ghettos and their deportation to labour camps.

As for the comparison of Nazism and Zionism, I think such an attempt at equivalence says a good deal more about the author than he intends. It is the statement of a sick and disordered mind. To compare the two and deem one as bad as the other is beyond the pale. However, that isn’t even the worst thing he says in the article:

While the majority of Jews continued to resist the anti-Semitic basis of Zionism and its alliances with anti-Semites, the Nazi genocide not only killed 90 percent of European Jews, but in the process also killed the majority of Jewish enemies of Zionism who died precisely because they refused to heed the Zionist call of abandoning their countries and homes.

First to say something nice. Without intending to, Massad has managed to justify one the foundational principles of Zionism: that in order to be safe and secure and free of the burden of European anti-Semitism, Jews required a state of their own in which they could be self-governing. It is certainly so that the existence of the Yishuv and Jewish emigration to Palestine saved hundreds of thousands of lives, and that restriction on said migration by British colonial authorities in the years prior to the Holocaust prevented the preservation of a good many more. It’s good of Massad to acknowledge this.

But then there’s what else Massad says here, and it is not much of a stretch to characterise Massad’s thesis as follows: All of Europe’s good Jews were the ones that did not heed to call to make aliya and died in the Holocaust; the Zionist Jews who made it to Palestine and survived were (and are) bad Jews. “The Jewish holocaust killed off the majority of Jews who fought and struggled against European anti-Semitism, including Zionism,” Massad says, and he uses this idea to build the next part of his article:

Post-War West German governments that presented themselves as opening a new page in their relationship with Jews in reality did no such thing. Since the establishment of the country after WWII, every West German government has continued the pro-Zionist Nazi policies unabated. There was never a break with Nazi pro-Zionism. This is to be added to the massive billions that Germany has paid to the Israeli government as compensation for the holocaust, as if Israel and Zionism were the victims of Nazism, when in reality it was anti-Zionist Jews who were killed by the Nazis.

Never mind the families who lost relatives in the Shoah who were living in Israel during the Holocaust. And, never mind the thousands of European refugees of the Holocaust who, unwanted in Europe and the United States, made their way to Palestine both legally and illegally in the years following the Second World War. They, evidently, are undeserving of restitution because they had the gall to make it to Palestine. And, in getting to Palestine, at that point through Massad’s eyes they ceased to be Jewish: they became Zionists. And once one becomes a Zionist, one are no longer a victim of the Holocaust. Remember: “in reality it was anti-Zionist Jews who were killed by the Nazis.”

Massad is particularly fixated on the link between Zionism and Nazism, one which apparently continues to this very day:

Even the new holocaust memorial built in Berlin that opened in 2005 maintains Nazi racial apartheid, as this “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe” is only for Jewish victims of the Nazis who must still today be set apart, as Hitler mandated, from the other millions of non-Jews who also fell victim to Nazism.

The ignorance here is absolutely astonishing. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe exists in defiance of Nazism and previous attempts by German governments East and West to fudge the past.

To be specific, this kind of memorialisation came about in reaction to East German (but also West German) narratives of the Holocaust which equated those who died in the Shoah either to members of the communist resistance or in some cases conscripted soliders. All, then, were victims of Nazism. It only after 1990 that appropriate distinctions came to be made, with the emergence of both general Holocaust memorials and memorials to the separate groups targeted by the Nazi regime. If Massad has a problem with the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, I can only suggest he should go to Berlin, find said memorial, and then walk across the street where the Memorial to the Murdered Homosexuals of Europe can be found. Then again, he might not like that either.

The whole point of Massad’s long, boring, and unlettered article is summed up in this statement:

Israel’s claim that its critics must be anti-Semites presupposes that its critics believe its claims that it represents “the Jewish people”. But it is Israel’s claims that it represents and speaks for all Jews that are the most anti-Semitic claims of all.

The most anti-Semitic of all. It’s enough to make you heave.

haaretz: Israelis celebrate the Jewish holiday of Shavuot

Tue, 14 May 2013 16:08:42 +0100

Photo by Guy Eisner

Photo by Eliyahu Hershkovitz

haaretz:

Israelis celebrate the Jewish holiday of Shavuot

If I were a politician and therefore had to deliver public...

Mon, 13 May 2013 13:11:07 +0100

If I were a politician and therefore had to deliver public speeches, I would almost certainly do all of them in front of a giant portrait of Yitzhak Rabin.

(Credit: Haaretz/Oren Nachshon)

OVER THE WEEKEND: Senior Tories back EU exit; Sharif wins Pakistan election; J14 returns in Tel Aviv

Mon, 13 May 2013 11:00:39 +0100

In the continued fallout from UKIP’s decent showing in local election, Michael Gove and Philip Hammond said that if a referendum were held tomorrow, they would vote for the UK to leave the European Union. [BBC]
Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif claimed victory in Pakistan’s legislative elections, although his Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party did not secure an absolute majority. [The Guardian]
Authorities linked twin car bombings in southern Turkey to the continued unrest in Syria and the government of Bashar al-Assad. [The New York Times]
More than 12,000 marched through Tel Aviv on Saturday night, to protest against Yair Lapid’s budget proposal and for social justice. [+972]
Following a meeting with Mahmoud Abbas, Shelly Yachimovich called on Israelis and Palestinians to renew the process for a two-state solution now. [Ha’aretz]
A celebration of Stiliyan Petrov’s life and career was almost ruined by Aston Villa’s 2-1 defeat at home to Chelsea. Frank Lampard became Chelsea’s leading goalscorer with two second-half goals. [BBC]

THE WEEK THAT WAS (07-10/05/2013)

Fri, 10 May 2013 20:00:42 +0100

This week, I covered the Church of Scotland’s slanderous new document, “The inheritance of Abraham”, which used a twisted definition of Zionism to deny Jewish claims to the Land of Israel. Also, I looked at the anti-Semitic tropes Philip Weiss utilises in his articles, and asked who exactly has the right to determine who is a good or bad Jew.

Amos Oz asks this very question in his new book, Jews and Words, and he spoke about it recently in a lecture at the University of California San Diego. Peace Now, which whom Oz is connected, found the money Yair Lapid has been looking for (hint: look beyond the Green Line), while in Ha’aretz, Anshel Pfeffer argued that those who support BDS are merely useful idiots for Israel’s right wing.

Elsewhere, this week’s essential musical was Miss Saigon, and I wrote about the role of the production number, while my song choice was “I Am Here”, as part of the ongoing look at Israeli music.

This is adorable. The song is called “Hineni Kan”,...

Fri, 10 May 2013 19:38:08 +0100

This is adorable. The song is called “Hineni Kan”, “I Am Here”, and is — insofar as I can tell from the translation — not only about love and longing in general but specifically the Jewish yearning for Jerusalem. The chorus goes:

I am here, like circling birds,
I am here, looking from the roofs;
I am here, like a stone in the fence,
like a rock, like a well -
I am the one who always returns, returns.

I am responsible for all the views of the video.

(Lyrics in Hebrew and English)

Is he or she a good or a bad Jew? This is up to the next Jew to...

Fri, 10 May 2013 15:50:00 +0100

Is he or she a good or a bad Jew? This is up to the next Jew to say…

The Rabbi of the Western Wall, Shmuel Rabinowitz, had called for calm, but in the end the scene at Women of the Wall’s monthly visit on Friday morning was far from it. As Judy Maltz and Yair Ettinger report in Ha’aretz, thousands of ultra-Orthodox demonstrators turned up to picket and try and block Women of the Wall from worshipping as they deem fit:

The demonstrators jeered at the women as they prayed, some throwing water bottles and chairs in their direction. Dozens of riot police were on hand to separate them from the women’s prayer group and they grew increasingly violent. After the women exited Dung Gate, ultra-Orthodox demonstrators ambushed them with rocks.

…Several young seminary girls questioned by Ha’aretz said that they had come to the Western Wall because they were told to do so. One young woman, named Rachel, who refused to provide her last name or the name of her seminary, said she had come to protest women praying in the men’s section. Women of the Wall, however, do not pray in the men’s section, but in the women’s section.

Rabbi Aaron Frank, the principal of Beth Tefiloh, a modern Orthodox day school in Baltimore, said he had just “come to daven” at the Western Wall with a few of his students. But when a group of ultra-Orthodox noticed him being interviewed by a foreign TV crew, they began shouting in his direction: “You are a Reform Christian. You are a Muslim. You are the pope.”

This is shameful. The Western Wall belongs not to one Jew, nor one strand of Judaism — it is the collective property of all Jews: secular, Liberal, Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, and ultra-Orthodox. It must be possible for haredi Jews to pray as they wish, and for Women of the Wall to do the same, without the two coming into conflict.

The onus, in this instance, is on the haredim: it is about time they acknowledge, at least in the public sphere, that there more than one way to be Jew. This begins with refraining from calling Jews who aren’t ultra-Orthodox goyim, and ending these brash displays of verbal and physical intimidation at the Wall and on the street. At the moment, their words and actions not only undermine religious pluralism in Israel, but the few gathered at the Wall today threaten the haredi community more widely, particularly given that their privileged position is evermore being called into question. The haredi community — known for its charity and dedication to study — is better than this.

Perhaps to clarify: It is not that one Jew does not have the right to tell the other how to be a Jew from time to time. To assert to the contrary would be a threat to discourse and argumentation, and evolution of thought and religious practice. Better to say, then, that while it is fine for one to Jew tell the another how to be a good Jew, they do not have to heed that advice, and should not be forced to do so, either.

Church of Scotland Insults Jews With Denial of Claim to Israel

Fri, 10 May 2013 14:00:00 +0100

The Jewish Daily Forward, May 10, 2013

The injection of theology into the Israeli-Palestinian real estate dispute has rarely proved helpful, particularly in cases where one side seeks to make a claim to all the land at the expense of the other.

The Church of Scotland’s laughably regressive new document, “The Inheritance of Abraham?: A Report on the ‘Promised Land,” which wilfully mischaracterises and then dismisses Jewish claims to a state in Palestine, is equally as unwelcome.

Its premise is that Zionism is not a national but a religious ideology, grounded in specific and unconditional biblical claims to the Land of Israel. The position of Zionism is that “God promises the land to the Israelites unconditionally,” it says, adding that “Zionists think that Jewish people are serving God’s special purpose.” As such, “Christians should not be supporting exclusive or even privileged divine right” to any territory. “If Jesus is indeed the Yes to all God’s promises, the promise to Abraham about land is fulfilled through the impact of Jesus, not by restoration of land to the Jewish people.”

When it isn’t promoting supersessionism — the notion that the truth of the New Testament renders irrelevant the claims of the Old — it’s borderline anti-Semitic.

“It has to be recognized that the enormity of the Holocaust has often reinforced the belief that Israel is entitled to the land unconditionally,” it states, but “Christians must not sacrifice the universalist, inclusive dimension of Christianity and revert to the particular exclusivism of the Jewish faith because we feel guilty about the Holocaust.”

Rather, “the Jewish people have to repent of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians between 1947 and 1949. They must be challenged, too, to stop thinking of themselves as victims and special.”

This document has been welcomed by the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign in particular. Mick Napier, the campaign chair, directed the Forward to an article in which he asserts that “The Inheritance of Abraham?” concludes “what every sane person has already decided — that the Christian or Jewish Bibles are not (any longer) to be treated as title deeds to modern real estate and that Israel’s violation of Palestinian human rights is very bad indeed.”

It is true that Scotland has traditionally had a more radical political culture than the rest of the United Kingdom, and that in the past, Israel’s ambassador to the U.K., Daniel Taub, has voiced his concern over “elements of extreme hostility to Israel in parts of Scottish society.” But speaking to the Forward, Hannah Holtschneider, senior lecturer in Jewish studies at the University of Edinburgh, indicated that the document is a reflection not so much of public opinion in Scotland, but of a subset within the Church of Scotland that wishes to “change the church’s understanding of the Jewish people” and its position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Within the Church of Scotland, a significant faction has come to identify with the plight of Palestinian Christians, both those living in Israel and under occupation in the West Bank.

This has now manifested itself through this document, the intent of which is the shift by the Church of Scotland away from identification with Jewish theology and toward the Palestinian cause as a political matter and ecumenical matter. That this document has been published now is the consequence of an evolution over a number of years on these issues and a desire on the part of the authors — the Church and Society Council of the Church of Scotland — to have its conclusions adopted by the General Assembly of the church, which will convene later in May.

Holtschneider believes that this document is a step backward for the Church of Scotland, one that “seeks to challenge developments in Jewish-Christian relations made in the last 30 years.” It is a “problematic document,” one that “conflates issues” and calls for a “radical reassessment” not only of the church’s position on Israel, but also of Christian understanding of the Old Testament.

Indeed, “The Inheritance of Abraham?” is an unusually unlettered document. It is based on a false premise that Zionism is a purely religious movement, ignoring that in its origins, IT was a secular, national movement that aimed to address finally the problem of anti-Semitism. “The Inheritance of Abraham?” displays a very cheap and narrow understanding of Jewish and Israeli history, and presents a caricature of the conflict in its limited analysis of it, one that views Israel as the only actor in the region, as if the Palestinian people have no agency themselves. And in so doing, it makes a very large and triumphalist claim for itself that Jewish claims to all or part of the Land of Israel are rendered invalid by the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.

The Scottish Council of Jewish Communities broadly concurs with such an assessment. In a statement, SCoJeC labeled “The Inheritance of Abraham?” an “outrage to everything that interfaith dialogue stands for. It reads like an Inquisition-era polemic against Jews and Judaism. It is biased, weak on sources, and contradictory. The picture it paints of both Judaism and Israel is barely even a caricature. The arrogance of telling the Jewish people how to interpret Jewish texts and Jewish theology is breathtaking.”

In order to repair the damage the document has already caused, the Board of Deputies of British Jews including representatives of Orthodox and Reform congregations met with Church of Scotland leaders yesterday. The statement released jointly by the Church and the Board noted that the original report “has given cause for concern and misunderstanding of its position and requires a new introduction to set the context for the report and give clarity about some of the language used.”

“The inheritance of Abraham” will thus be redrafted before it is tabled at the General Assembly later this month. Whether the Kirk really wishes to heal its relationship and continue its dialogue with Scotland’s Jews, or turn back the clock on interfaith dialogue to an age of Christian supremacy, will be made all the more clearer then.

ESSENTIAL MUSICAL #15: MISS SAIGON The mega musicals of the...

Thu, 09 May 2013 16:12:53 +0100

ESSENTIAL MUSICAL #15: MISS SAIGON

The mega musicals of the 1980s — some of which I have written about in previous posts — gained notoriety for their set pieces. Each show contained a memorable production number (or even numbers) that relied upon the use of expensive and showy scenery, augmented by highly emotional and wrought music: the roller derbies in Starlight Express on a stage that extends out into the audience; the fall of the chandelier in The Phantom of the Opera; Sunset Boulevard’s flying mansion.

Perhaps the most famous of these — although not necessarily for the right reasons — was the helicopter sequence from Alain Boublil and Claude-Michel Schoenberg’s Miss Saigon, a retelling of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly set during the Vietnam War. “The Fall of Saigon” is a staged re-enactment of the moment when the final helicopter departed from the roof of the American embassy as south Vietnam fell to the Viet Cong. In order to jam this launch into the plot, it takes place in the second act in the form of a flashback, making it seem to some all the more superfluous.

Indeed, aside from some simple and at times cringe-worthy lyrics (the rhyme sequence you-too-do is overused, while the love song “Now That I’ve Seen Her” is embarrassing), Miss Saigon’s principal flaw is that it contains too many of these staged moments. In order, these include: a revolutionary street parade; a press conference-cum-sermon; the aforementioned helicopter escape; the car that comes onstage for “The American Dream”. At times, Miss Saigon feels like a means to an end, moments strung together with plot rather than a plot with moments.

Or, maybe it’s better to say that these moments at times overwhelm what is essentially a very simple love story, of a Vietnamese bar girl and an American GI who come together amidst a war and then become separated as the country falls apart around them. Miss Saigon is essentially a good musical, with some great songs including “Sun and Moon”, “The Last Night of the World”, “I Still Believe”, and “I’d Give My Life for You”. Plus, outside of the love story, Boublil and Schoenberg created The Engineer, a character who’s fantastically sleazy and obsessive, and who is (as the above clip shows) given his own memorable production number.

On Monday, April 22, 2013 world-renowned Israeli writer Amos...

Thu, 09 May 2013 12:52:09 +0100

On Monday, April 22, 2013 world-renowned Israeli writer Amos Oz delivered the Herman Wouk Visiting Lecture to a crowd of 500 on the UCSD campus. Oz, who recently published a book, Jews and Words (Yale U.P., 2012) with his daughter Fania Oz-Salzberger, spoke of the unprecedented revival of the Hebrew language, and advocated for moderation and compromise in in approaching the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The right leaders may already exist, they just don’t know it yet, he told the audience. While at UCSD, Oz also met with a group of undergraduate and graduate students who had been studying his fiction. The visit was generously sponsored by the Price family.

The Israel boycotters are the right wing's useful idiots

Wed, 08 May 2013 17:59:20 +0100

The Israel boycotters are the right wing's useful idiots:

by Anshel Pfeffer, Ha’aretz, May 3, 2013

Undoubtedly, there has been a cost. But if the intention was to isolate Israel and Israelis and to influence Israeli policies, it has been a total failure. The movement’s small success, mainly on university campuses and in a few places in Britain and South Africa, has been to remind Israelis and their Jewish supporters that they cannot ignore the Palestinian conflict. In effect, they tried to do what the Arab national movement failed at − deny Israel normalization. And to a large degree they have also failed.

Even under successive right-wing governments, Israel has expanded its trade relations, membership in international bodies, cultural and sporting ties. More crucially, they have provided a cause around which Jewish organizations and individuals ‏(all but a small fringe of anti-Zionists‏) can rally, a cause that unites them, a cause in which they have the support of the great majority of Western governments in fighting against Israel’s “delegitimization.”

…The BDS campaign is little more than a minor nuisance to Israel’s current policies; a movement whose successes include empty resolutions, heckling concerts and forcing Jewish students to dance in hiding. They have joined Jewish settlers in the West Bank as obstacles to peace. Read their literature and you will see how similar both groups are. They both oppose a two-state solution, both believe that Western media is biased against them, both abhor the Palestinian Authority and any real effort being made to improve the daily lives of Palestinian citizens, both see the Obama administration ‏(any American administration, for that matter‏) as a hostile entity, and while both deny racist tendencies, they are riddled with bigots and maintain contacts with dubious regimes and political parties.

The BDSers have only one advantage over the settlers − we can totally ignore them. Any undue attention to this rabble of misfits, cranks and conspiracy theorists only serves to aggrandize them and provides the settlers and their supporters with ammunition. Anyone who is serious about achieving lasting peace in the region should let them languish in obscurity.

Where’s the money?

Wed, 08 May 2013 17:38:32 +0100

Where’s the money?