Proof that media representation of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has officially fucked me up

I received a Facebook request to join a group called “6,000,000 AGAINST Hitler, Nazism, and Neo-Nazism.” My very first thought was, “If I join, will that seem anti-Palestine?”

Sigh…

Kristallnacht

I don’t really have much to say about it, but tonight’s the 70th anniversary, so I feel obligated to post something. If you’d like to read more, Wikipedia’s always useful.

In other news, white people are feeling free to toss around the word nigger.

In other other news, here’s a story about my election day. I tried to give an elderly couple No on 8 flyers but they wouldn’t take them. “We’re voting yes,” the man said. “We think it’s a good idea!”

I couldn’t help but think of all the casual hatred that has simmered throughout the centuries – all the people who have thought of themselves as well-meaning, sensible, just concerned. I came across another anti-“Zionist” tirade the other day, on a site linked to by a major feminist blogger. Its reasoning went like this: 1. There’s no such thing as a secular Jew who isn’t a Zionist. Religious Jews aren’t necessarily Zionists, but no non-religious person would ever want to be Jewish and not Zionist. (After all, Zionism’s 100% of all Jewish cultures, right?) 2. Anyone who cares about anti-Semitism is obsessed with anti-Semitism, and thus does not care about Palestinians. 3. If you think I’ve got a problem with Jews, re-read #2.

I tried not to let it get to me, but you can see that it did.

Anyway.

Thanks, Lithuania!

From the Forward:

The European Union has designated Vilnius as the “European Capital of Culture” for 2009. It is a recognition Lithuania does not deserve.

…

Today, six decades [after the Holocaust], the small, reviving Jewish community is seeking the return of former Jewish communal property as a means of restoring and preserving Jewish heritage sites and supporting its own limited religious and cultural needs. The Lithuanian Jewish community seeks to follow the paths taken by Jewish communities in neighboring countries such as the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia, where community property restitution was implemented years ago.

In Prague the restored Jewish quarter, with its eight synagogues, is again the center of Jewish activity in the Czech Republic and a magnet for tourists. The Krakow neighborhood known as Kazimierz hosts an annual Jewish Cultural Festival that brings 25,000 people together for a week of concerts, films and lectures that display Poland’s rich Jewish legacy. In Slovakia a government-endowed foundation, created as a partial settlement for looted Jewish assets during the Holocaust, aids the elderly and restores cemeteries and synagogues.

None of this is happening in Lithuania. Instead, the Lithuanian government, for more than six years, has continually delayed an agreement on communal property restitution. Meanwhile, former Jewish properties have been privatized and the community lacks the most basic support for education and welfare.

Vilna’s historic Jewish cemetery, for example, was hundreds of years old, but in the mid-19th century tsarist Russia built a military fort on the site, and in the 1950s the Soviets replaced it with a sports arena. The pattern of disrespect continued under Lithuania’s post-Communist leadership. Despite promises that no graves would be desecrated under their watch, the land was privatized, sold to developers and, ignoring regulations to the contrary, city permits were issued to allow the construction of luxury apartments. Lithuania’s president promised in September 2007 to stop construction, but it has yet to be halted.

…

In March, when Lithuania celebrated its independence from the Soviet Union, several hundred neo-Nazis and skinheads paraded along Gedimino Avenue in central Vilnius, walking past the Parliament and the prime minister’s office, waving flags with a Lithuanian swastika and shouting “Juden Raus.”

This was not the first neo-Nazi rally in Eastern Europe. Last November a similar group organized a march in Prague with the provocative goal of walking through the city’s Jewish quarter. But in the Czech capital the neo-Nazis were greeted by thousands of vocal counter-demonstrators and nearly all the country’s political leaders. In Vilnius, where incitement to ethnic hatred is a crime, police made no arrests while providing the marchers with an escort. Lithuania’s president, to be fair, did voice criticism — 10 days after the event.

Land of my forefathers – you do me proud!

Okay, so I basically just excerpted about half the article there. If you go read the whole thing, your blood will boil twice as much!

what neo-nazis tell us

What’s up? Not much here. Ran into some swastikas the other day.

My husband and I were biking on a trail that runs under a string of overpasses. After we’d passed under the zillionth one, he told me he’d seen some swastika graffiti; when we returned a couple of hours later, I stopped to look more closely. The pillar holding up the underpass was completely covered: swastikas by themselves, swastikas with “1488” written between the arms, swastikas as the periods in D.O.S.* There were lots of words in German, along with some indecipherable stuff about Orange County. (I live in Long Beach.) I shook my head at it for a few minutes and then left, feeling a banal sense of bafflement that somewhere very near where I live, people want me dead.

But it doesn’t feel real, you know? It’s hard to believe they’d do anything to me if I encountered them; with Southern California’s large black and Latino populations, it seems more likely that Neo-Nazis here have priorities other than someone who looks like them. It’s easy for me to believe that they wouldn’t hurt a nice white girl; it’s hard to consider myself a target and not just an ally. What am I supposed to do with the knowledge that they’re somewhere nearby? Do I just go on assuming that they’re fringe crazies who are probably living in their mothers’ basements and don’t really care about me anyway? What if I did meet up with one? What would happen?

Because, I mean, they’re here. I passed a wall covered in swastikas.

In what could be called the beginning of a new trend in Jewish American literature, both Michael Chabon and Philip Roth recently published alternate history novels that focus on the hypothetical persecution of American and European Jews. In Roth’s The Plot Against America, Charles Lindberg becomes president and kicks off half a decade of pogroms, forced assimilation, and anti-Jewish propaganda that ends only when the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. The Yiddish Policeman’s Union explores what would have happened if Israel had been destroyed within a few years of its inception; Jews live in Alaska and are faced with the end of their autonomy. I’ll admit, I was put off when I first read them (and not just because neither book is its author’s best). I’d experienced barely any antisemitism in my life. The Holocaust was over; the world had discovered what hate can lead to and had shuddered and repented and seen the error of its ways. Why were these guys inventing new ways for us to be victimized? It was like they still wanted to feel the piousness and tragic glamor of an oppressed minority, and had resorted to what-ifs to indulge in those feelings. Seriously, there was real oppression to worry about. How selfish of them.

That was before I learned about how antisemitism works – how it ebbs and flows, how Jews are allowed to rise to positions of power and then violently scapegoated. It was before I learned that the same cycles – Jews prosper, enjoy physical safety, and then are abruptly attacked en masse – have been occurring for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Whenever I hear a Jewish-sounding name attached to a conservative, I take note of it. Other people do, too.** And after awhile, it really does start to seem like there’s an inordinate number of Jews in high places, regardless of the actual numbers; we hear those names and make those associations and discard some facts that don’t fit with our theses and before you know it, people are blaming globalization on the all-powerful Israeli bankers.

And the main thing I’ve learned after a year of reading feminist and anti-racist commentary is that the most noticeable signs of bigotry – the really outrageous stuff that the mainstream media condemns – is only ever the tip of the iceberg. For every extremist who decides to go out and kill someone, there are a hundred thousand ordinary people who think hate is wrong but, well, just feel uneasy around women or black people or gays or Mexicans or Jews. Overtly sexist and racist crimes aren’t the disease; they’re merely symptoms of broader, low-level resentment and suspicion. My whole life I’ve thought that antisemitism only manifests itself in skinhead rallies and Stormfront message boards. But if it’s anything like other forms of prejudice, there’s no way for me to gauge how pervasive it actually is. Do ordinary people view me differently because I’m openly Jewish? Is that why it took me so long to fully identify as a Jew? Is it why I still rarely feel completely comfortable?

Because I’ll probably never be arrested or denied a job because I’m Jewish. So how do I address this without feeling sanctimonious or paranoid?

At least I’ve arrived at a better understanding of what Chabon and Roth were trying to do. They didn’t write those novels to invent new forms of bigotry; they didn’t write them to cash in on Gentile guilt. They wrote them, I think, because anti-Jewish sentiment still runs deep in American culture (not to mention other cultures – but I’m writing about what I know), even though it’s currently in a lull, marked only by occasional acts of extremism. I think those two novels are pressure valves, venting the fear that all antisemitism needs is one good catalyst to really flare up. Because what do you do when you sense it but can’t see it? What do you do when someone makes an offhand joke – “You’re half Jewish? Well, then half of you is all right!” “If he tries to charge admission to the party, slap him in the nose!” – and you only realize later that you should have been offended? What do you do when everything seems normal and safe and harmonious all the time, except that some invisible entity has spray painted swastikas on your bike trail, and you have no idea what they look like or how many of them there are?

Do you keep assuming that everything will be okay forever? Or do you start wondering who’s going to kick off the pogroms?

Because neither option makes much sense, does it?

_______
*14/88, as I found out on a most pleasant and fulfilling journey to Google, stands for the Fourteen Words – “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children” – which are adapted from an 88-word-long passage from Mein Kamph. I wasn’t able to find out what D.O.S. means.

** The link leads to Adbusters’ infamous Why Won’t Anyone Say They Are Jewish?, which exposes Jews’ control of the Right. It’s interesting to note that, according to Adam Ma’nit, conservatives have published similar lists exposing Jews’ control of the Left. If we’re so powerful, where’s my damn health care?