← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Zoroaster
Thread ID: 9248 | Posts: 3 | Started: 2003-08-24
2003-08-24 11:08 | User Profile
[url=http://www.dailycollegian.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2001/12/11/3c159c4b53b8a?in_archive=1]http://www.dailycollegian.com/vnews/displa...8a?in_archive=1[/url]
Editorial Calling Out Jewish Supremacy
By Uri Strauss December 11, 2001
Naming an evil is the first step towards overcoming it, so it is important to publicly identify forms of hatred that are not usually acknowledged. Concepts that are widely recognized today, like white supremacy and sexual harrassment, had to be given names before they could be confronted by organized sectors of society. I want to call out another form of hatred that I hope people will start to identify: Jewish supremacy. Here is my call: the state of Israel is a Jewish supremacist state; many Americans are Jewish supremacists; Jewish supremacist ideology dominates discussion of the Israel-Palestine conflict in the United States. The vigil/political rally held at the Hillel House on Thursday was Jewish supremacist. Let's be clear about what Jewish supremacy is. It is the belief that Jews have some special status that entitles them to privileges that other humans aren't entitled to, or the idea that Jews are better than other people. It's clear that identifying and opposing Jewish supremacy is not anti-Semitic, even though the concept is potentially of use to anti-Semites. This is a relevant consideration, since anti-Semitism is a serious problem, but I think that ultimately, the fact that Jewish supremacy exists is far better ammunition for anti-Semites than the practice of pointing it out and trying to eliminate it. So identifying and fighting Jewish supremacy, in my opinion, is not just good for the victims of this ideology, but also for the security of Jews.
Here is an example of Jewish supremacy in its less harmful form: a few years ago, I spent a summer working behind the cash register at a bakery. At the time, I wore a kippa, making it obvious that I am a European Jew. A Jewish supremacist man saw me and was disturbed that a young European Jew should work at a menial job that he thought was fit for a non-Jew.
A far more serious consequence of Jewish supremacy, and the reason it needs to be identified, is the national tragedy of the Palestinians, who were driven out of their land by Zionist Jews who justified their actions by using Jewish supremacist ideology. Palestinians are divided into three populations: those who were not expelled in 1948 and remain in Israel as citizens, subjected to the harsh rule of the Jewish supremacist apartheid state; those who live in territories that were conquered in 1967, subjected to the same harsh rule but without the limited protection afforded by Israeli citizenship; and those who remain outside of historic Palestine, mostly in refugee camps.
The standard defense for Israel's refusal to allow them to return to their homes, as they are entitled to do under international law and agreements struck by Israel, is that doing so would "destroy the Jewish character of Israel". They believe recently arrived Jews don't just have a right to settle in Israel, but can also set up a state whose Jewish character is more important than the human rights of the indigenous inhabitants. Israel's "Jewish character", by the way, refers to the fact that Jews are privileged over non-Jews, not to the fact that Israel is governed by Jewish law or tradition. It isn't. The only exception is marriage law, which conveniently makes it illegal for Jews and non-Jews to marry, giving Israel one of the characteristics of classic racist states like apartheid South Africa.
The Jewish supremacist character of Israel is its essential characteristic. It is enshrined in all sorts of racial privileges in Israel's equivalent of a constitution. It cannot be challenged at the ballot box, because Israeli law does not allow political parties to advocate racial equality. It includes state-affiliated agencies like the Jewish National Fund, which administers 93% of the land in Israel (almost all of it stolen), and makes sure that none of it is sold or leased to non-Jews. It includes the police and court systems, which treat Palestinians worse than the U.S. police and courts treat African-Americans and other oppressed minorities. It is evident in the "temporary" state of emergency that since 1948 has denied Palestinians living in Israel the rights and freedoms to which the law entitles them, and in the discrimination that non-Jews face from every government agency.
If the state of Israel embodies Jewish supremacist values, then so do its supporters, or at least those who do not clearly dissociate themselves from its ideology. Such people have the job of defending their ideology cut out for them. Fortunately for them, they are assisted by the Jewish supremacist and anti-Arab culture that reigns in the U.S., especially in mainstream media. Newspaper columnists make outrageously false claims about Palestinians and the Palestinian Authority without backing them up, knowing that they're unlikely to be rebuked, let alone fired. A classic example is the lie that school textbooks printed by the Palestinian Authority inculcate hatred of Israel in Palestinian children, repeated just last week by the Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby.
Even more common than these slanders are inaccuracies about the history of the Palestine-Israel conflict. A current favorite is the unsubstantiated myth that the last Israeli Prime Minister made an extremely generous offer to the Palestinians at the Camp David peace talks last year, but this is just one example among thousands. The Israeli version of events is almost always accepted as the reality, although disinterested inquiry usually reveals that the Palestinian version is far closer to the truth.
The usual defense of Israel's Jewish supremacy is that the Palestinians want to destroy Israel. Let's think about this argument for a minute, leaving aside any skepticism that a nation that doesn't have so much as an airport could defeat one of the world's most powerful armies, with its large arsenal of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and its backing by the world's only superpower. In the worst plausible scenario, the Islamic organization Hamas ousts the Palestinian Authority and imposes an Islamic regime in Palestine, singling out Jews for especially harsh treatment and banishing a large number of them. The resulting situation would be a reversal of the current situation, except that the oppression would be religious in nature as opposed to racial. So the Jewish supremacist argument essentially boils down to: a Jewish supremacist state must be maintained because in the unlikely worst case scenario, Jews would be treated by Palestinian Muslims as they are treated by Jews today. This reasoning could not be accepted by any egalitarian. So the defense usually offered for Israel's Jewish supremacist character itself depends on Jewish supremacist assumptions.
Regarding the event held at Hillel on Thursday evening: it was publicized as a vigil for recent victims of terrorism and in solidarity with the State of Israel. To declare oneself in solidarity with the Jewish supremacist state without distancing oneself from this aspect of its character is to implicate oneself as a Jewish supremacist. What's more, the vigil focused on victims of acts of terror directed against Jews, despite the fact that terror aimed at Palestinians has produced far more victims. If you challenge a Jewish supremacist with this claim, they will dream up some reason for not considering Israel's unprovoked murder of civilians to be terrorism. But their real reason is that to the Jewish supremacist, victims of Israeli terrorism can't be elevated to the level of the victims of Palestinian terrorism, and an easy way to do it is to deny that the acts of violence fall into the same category.
2003-08-24 12:28 | User Profile
The other side of the fence.
So identifying and fighting Jewish supremacy, in my opinion, is not just good for the victims of this ideology, but also for the security of Jews.
Jewish supremacy is good or bad for the Jews, depending on which Jew is speaking.
It's always bad for the rest of humanity.
2003-08-24 17:23 | User Profile
When zhid supremacy is bad for the zhids, it's only when the non-zhids are paying attention. Otherwise, zhids believe they deserve to rule the world.