Things People Blame the Jews For, Volume LXXII: Inadequate Linux Education

The whole premise of "Things People Blame the Jews For" is that Jews are blamed for anything and everything, no matter how absurd. Yet even though I created the series, I never fully comprehended the true scope of "no matter how absurd". I thought I did, but I didn't. After all, I was always able to make a snarky comment or bit of wry commentary, an endeavor which necessarily required being able to draw some connection between what Jews were being blamed for and some attribute of the real world. The connection might be tenuous or even invented, but it was there, and I could follow the thread.

Today, I may have been bested, for I have encountered a specimen on Bluesky that I really just have no comment on. I cannot make heads or tails of it. It transcends the series. It has defeated me. Behold:

"Says it all really." Indeed, it does.

Justifying the Holocaust is a Small Price to Pay for Abolishing CRT

You've probably seen by now the story about a Texas school administrator suggesting to teachers that, in the wake of recent supposedly "anti-Critical Race Theory" rules demanding that teachers provide "both sides" of contentious or controversial topics and not in any way proffer sweeping denunciations of anyone or anything as "systematically" racist, they must provided a "balanced" account of the Holocaust. To be clear, it seems apparent that the administrator is not happy about this, but rather viewed this as the inevitable consequence of following the rules that have been laid down (and she indicated that there may have, in fact, been parental complaints before about the Holocaust being taught in an "imbalanced" fashion).

The small but vocal Jewish contingent which has been pushing the anti-CRT hysteria, suddenly aware of the leopards hungrily eyeing their own faces, was thrust on the defensive. Do they have regrets about the obvious and inevitable consequences of their own actions? No. And incredibly, they seem willing to allow for renewed debate over the very morality of the Holocaust if that's what it takes to oppose critical race theory:

“The dispute about the interpretation of events is completely legitimate, but the dispute about the existence of events is either dangerous or stupid or both,” said Rabbi David Wolpe of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. “You can, for example, argue endlessly about the effects and causes of slavery but to argue that slavery didn’t happen is idiotic, or pernicious, and the same thing is true with the Holocaust.”

It is not an accident that Rabbi Wolpe, and the other anti-CRT voices quoted in the article, frame their disclaimers as opposing Holocaust denial -- a purely factual stance. Because let's be precise about what Rabbi Wolpe is suggesting here at applied to Holocaust education. He's saying that it's stupid to debate the "existence" of events, whether it's the Holocaust or slavery, but we must be "balanced" as to the dispute over their "interpretation". And perhaps "balance" isn't meant to apply to the raw existence of historical fact. But that means "balance" is applied to matters of normative assessment. The real potential "balance" in the Holocaust context is not denying that it happened, but suggesting that it was justified, or at the very least wasn't as bad or unjustified as "critics" suggest. Making sure we provide "diverse and contending perspectives without giving deference to any one perspective" means we have to dispassionately present the Holocaust from the point of view of the Germans just as much as the Jews.

As with slavery, where the "dissenting" narrative is that slavery's evils were overstated, many masters were kind, most White people were innocent, and in any event none of it has anything to do with the present day, the Holocaust too has alternative perspectives, where unflinching presentation of the Holocaust's horrors now must be "balanced" with narratives emphasizing "good Germans", the "innocent Wehrmacht", legitimate German grievances, and Jewish aggression and exploitation (both before and after the event). We would hate for any White people to feel "demonized", after all.

This was entirely predictable. As much as folks like Wolpe and David Bernstein loudly proclaim to be shocked -- shocked -- by the reach of the formal anti-CRT legislation they purport to "oppose", such legislation is the tangible manifestation of the anti-CRT campaign, which never had anything to do with CRT to begin with. It was always a backlash against teaching unflinching and unblinking history in the context of systemic oppression, dressed up in a sloppy "liberal" appeal to "both-sidesing". Once you do that, of course it's going to apply to the Holocaust too.

The thing is, whether we're talking about the Holocaust or about Jim Crow, I concede it may not always be fun to learn their your "group" or your ancestors were the villains of a particular chapter of history. Nonetheless, the purpose of the educational practice is not to "demonize" any student on basis of their identity, and the ancillary effect of generating feelings of "discomfort" is not something that likely can be avoided without utterly neutering the value of the lesson. The Holocaust is uncomfortable. It's uncomfortable in terms of what it did to Jews, in what it says about the moral fiber and moral foundations of a modern European state, and in what it implies about contemporary politics (about Jews and otherwise). Same with America's history of racial apartheid. It simply is discomforting, in terms of what it has done to people of color, in what it says about our collective national conscience and our foundational creeds, and what it implies about present day injustices and inequities.

Nonetheless, Holocaust education is not and should not be agnostic as between whether the attempted extermination of Jews was good or bad, and is not and should not be studiously indifferent over drawing lessons on how to head off similar atrocities in the future. When Texas demands that agnosticism and that indifference under the patina of both-sidesing, then it is impossible for contemporary Holocaust education to function as it should. But these are indeed the wages of the anti-CRT campaign it has embarked on.

To some extent, then, we can perversely admire the principled decision Wolpe, Bernstein, et al are sticking to here. In their view, raw facts may be sacrosanct, but "interpretations" must always be open. And so, in practice, their view is that while Texas schools should not teach outright Holocaust denial, they can and must be more open to debating the Holocaust's merits -- the German side and the Jewish side, presenting is neutrally and dispassionately as possible. White Supremacists should count themselves lucky to have such tenacious advocates. The rest of the Jewish community will unsurprisingly remain appalled.

Holocaust Trivialization Leads To Holocaust Mockery

A recent news story reports on two Minnesota high school students who released a TikTok video titled "Me and the boys on the way to camp." It was making fun of the Holocaust.

Elsewhere in the country, Republican and conservative leaders have gotten very trigger-happy comparing coronavirus restrictions to the Holocaust. An Idaho state representative insisted that stay-at-home measures were "no different" than Hitler sending Jews to extermination camps. The Colorado House Minority Leader said that Governor Jared Polis' (who is Jewish) efforts reflected a "Gestapo-like mentality".  We all saw the pictures of right-wing protesters in Michigan holding signs saying "Heil Witmer" [sic] with a swastika on them (referring to Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer). There are other examples.

These are not the same thing. But they are related. The latter is a form of Holocaust trivialization, where it gets employed in opposition to political moves that fall clearly and obviously short of concentration camps and mass extermination.* The effect of Holocaust trivialization is to make the Holocaust utterly ordinary and mundane; unremarkable save for how it can pack an emotional punch in ordinary and mundane political debates. And once the Holocaust is ordinary and mundane, one can do ordinary, mundane things with. Leverage it in attack ads. Use it as a bit of effective (if perhaps hyperbolic) rhetoric. And, of course, mock it. Ordinary and mundane events in the political sphere are legitimate subjects of parody and mockery. It is the Holocaust's status as something distinct from the ordinary, in a separate class, that justifies keep it insulated from such insults. Take that away, and why shouldn't it get its share of snipes and jabs? There is a direct line from trivializing the Holocaust to mocking it. The kids in Minnesota and the elected officials in the GOP are not doing the same thing -- but there is a familial lineage.

The past few years have seen the GOP talk a very big game about what great friends they are the Jews. They say it every election season, of course, and they always put on such a display of hurt and confusion when that friendship isn't reciprocated. Well, here's part of the reason why. Given the slightest opportunity, they'll cheapen our genocide in service of a destructive, paranoid, and frankly inane political agenda. They won't care in the slightest the damage it does to the Jewish community. Hell, I doubt they even notice it. But we do.

* Here is what I wrote, incidentally, on comparisons of  immigrant detention camps in the U.S. to the Holocaust. I did not and do not like them, though in that case at the very least there is non-frivolous basis for the comparison (though not on the axis of systematic extermination) which made me feel as if litigating the comparison was of subsidiary importance to keeping our eye on opposing the underlying policy. By contrast, there is no remotely plausible basis for comparing stay-at-home protocols aimed at fighting a pandemic to Nazism. It can do nothing but trivialize the Holocaust.

The Strongest Point

A UK court has upheld the incitement conviction of Alison Chabloz, a singer-songwriter with a propensity for Holocaust denial. I don't want to get into the free speech concerns here -- the UK has different free speech rules than we have in the states, their merits or demerits are a matter for another time. Certainly, there's no question that Chabloz is a raging antisemite. Highlights of her lyrics include:

• "Did the Holocaust ever happen? Was it just a bunch of lies? Seems that some intend to pull the wool over our eyes. Eternal wandering liars haven’t got a clue, and when it comes to usury, victim’s always me and you."
• "Now Auschwitz, holy temple, is a theme park just for fools, the gassing zone a proven hoax, indoctrination rules."
• "Tell us another, come on, my brother, reap it, the cover, for tribal gain. Safe in our tower, now is the hour, money and power, we have no shame."
• "History repeats itself, no limit to our wealth, thanks to your debts we’re bleeding you dry. We control your media, control all your books and TV, with the daily lies we’re feeding, suffering victimisation. Sheeple have no realisation, you shall pay, all the way, until the break of day."

For added effect, she set the songs to the music of traditional Jewish folk music like Hava Negila (a tune she claimed she had made up herself).

But for whatever reason, I cannot stop cracking up at this highlight from the trial:

At one point, [Chabloz's attorney] suggested that the Nazis did not deliberately murder Anne Frank, declaring “She died of typhus, there is no dispute. They didn’t deliberately murder her. They might be responsible for her death by mistreatment.” Judge Hehir stopped the debate, telling Mr Davies: “I’m not sure that’s your strongest point Mr Davies.”

Indeed, I imagine not. Or maybe so, if you're hanging out in the right parts of the British internet. But -- just lawyer to lawyer -- if you're defending a Holocaust denier against the charge that they've engaged in hateful antisemitic speech, maybe just pivot away from the "did the Nazis really murder Anne Frank" debate.

In Conclusion, I Don't Understand Why Jews Keep Voting Democratic

Republican Congressman invites Holocaust denier to the State of the Union.

Holocaust denier (and former head of the American Nazi Party) to be Republican congressional nominee in Chicago.

Republican Sheriff (and Trump pardon recipient) Joe Arpaio gives repeated interviews with antisemitic publication, then gives the same "I didn't know who they were excuse" twice in four years.

Yep, it sure is strange why Jews keep supporting the Democratic Party by crushing margins, year after year.

B.o.B.'s Pro-Flat Earth, Pro-Holocaust Denier Diss Track

So this happened. The rapper B.o.B. put out a diss track targeting Neil DeGrasse Tyson for the mortal sin of noting that the earth is, indeed, round. The track, titled "Flatline" (get it?), also contains quite a few other conspiracy theories, including a shoutout to Holocaust Denier David Irving and the lyric "Stalin was way worse than Hitler/That’s why the POTUS gotta wear a Kipper."

For the most part, I find this more amusing than anything, though I am worried that I may not be able to listen to my two different versions of "Haterz Everywhere" guilt-free anymore. I do want to briefly point out two things, though:

(1) It's amazing how conspiracy theories hang together, and how the Jews always get roped into them. Flat earthism is nuts in its own right, but there's no inherent reason to think its adherents should have any particular views on Jews. Yet of course it is entirely unsurprising to hear Jews pop up here.

(2) The Gawker post actually doesn't mention the Holocaust denier thing at all (they do allude to there being more conspiracy theories in the lyrics other beyond belief in a flat earth). To be sure, pointing that out might kill the buzz of "haha, B.o.B is so stupid and ridiculous, beefing with Neil DeGrasse Tyson." Flat earthism is just dumb, but it doesn't really hurt anyone; anti-Semitism is more of a killjoy. Still, it strikes me as unlikely that other overt forms of racism or intolerance would pass by similarly unremarked-upon. The distinction, I feel, is that pointing out anti-Semitism -- even in such clear terms -- is considered to be gauche. It isn't something that we should keep a critical eye on and interrogate when we see it, it is something that we're all too sensitive towards and should be more willing to let slide.

Now to be sure, I'm not particularly threatened by this musical track (frankly, associating Holocaust denial with "Earth is round" denial is doing me a favor). So in a functioning deliberative space regarding anti-Semitism, I wouldn't really mind simply laughing this incident off. Indeed, (as much as a performative contradiction as this is) I don't think there's much more to say about B.o.B.'s Holocaust denial other than to snicker at how idiotic he's being. But it still stands out to me that it wasn't mentioned at all, and I think that failure is reflective of something worth pondering about.

If You Won't Listen To Me, Listen To You

Alison Chabloz, a Scottish artist has made some headlines by questioning the existence of Nazi gas chambers and performing the anti-Semitic "quenelle" gesture.

As blogs and local publications reported on the actions of Chabloz — a singer-songwriter who has lived in Egypt, among other countries — she published another blog post, explaining that her gesture was a “massive up yours” as a reaction to being “hounded online by a small group of hardline Zionists.”

Chabloz has been criticized in recent months for suggesting on Twitter that “it would appear that Anne Frank’s diary was mostly fabricated,” and that British organizations teaching about the Holocaust were “indoctrinating children.”

In her defense, Chabloz wrote that “nobody denies that the Jews and other groups suffered horrendous atrocities,” but added that, “if people dug a little deeper into the issue they may discover some interesting facts regards the presumed existence of homicidal Nazi gas chambers.”

Fascinating! And for the inevitable explanation about how none of this is anti-Semitic?

As for the quenelle, which French Prime Minister Manuel Valls in 2014 termed “an anti-Semitic gesture of hate,” Chabloz wrote that Roger Cukierman, president of France’s Jewish CRIF group, considers it “an anti-establishment gesture unless it is performed outside a place of worship or memorial to Holocaust victims.”

Or by someone who just said something like "Anne Frank was a liar and the gas chambers were fake"? Just guessing.

Anyway, Chaboz has now written that “All publicity is good, and it’s time more people started standing up to Zionist bullies,” (with the obligatory #FreePalestine hashtag). So consider this post my contribution to the movement.

Meanwhile, Back in Northfield...

I had a lovely conversation with some of my students yesterday during office hours. It was quite wide-ranging, but one thing we talked about was the Jewish cultural-shock of moving from (very Jewish) Bethesda, Maryland, to (very not-Jewish) Northfield, Minnesota for college. Northfield was, by and large, a perfectly fine place to be a Jew. Still, it was markedly different from Bethesda if only because there were so much fewer of us. And going from a place where everyone was intimately familiar with Jews (even if not Jewish themselves, they had a year-long crash course in synagogue practices from riding the Bar and Bat Mitzvah circuit), to a place where many people had never met any Jews at all, does change things. For example, I noted that unlike in Bethesda, at Carleton I did have to contend with people who believed that "the Jews killed Christ". Now technically, I heard that once in Bethesda too. Someone said it in 9th grade social studies, and the entire class burst out laughing. But that, to me, emphasizes the difference all the more -- it's not that there is nobody with anti-Semitic beliefs in Bethesda, it's just that the community culture is such that any such views are going to be marginalized and ridiculed. The difference in Northfield is not that I thought any large proportion of Carls thought I was a Christ-killer, but I didn't think that such views would be immediately understood as transparently ludicrous the way that they were back home.

All of this is a segue to my collegiate town reentering the news in the worst way possible. The local watering hole, The Contented Cow, is hosting a series of talks by a prominent conspiracy theorist of the "Holocaust-denial, Israel is responsible for 9/11" sort. Because nothing goes with a pint like a side of HoloHoax1!!11!.

In any event, I am pleased to see that the community has, apparently, risen up in protest (the conspirator in question, James Fetzer, is complaining that Northfield has not accorded him the "powerful, positive response" he is used to). And in a sense there is nothing more that should be said on this. The pub proprietor's response is to change the format from a "lecture" to a "debate", but I agree with my former Professor Louis Newman that there are some ideas that are better off ignored.

Yet, I can't resist one more comment. The pub, you see, wants to make one thing very clear about its Holocaust-denying, 9/11-was-a-Mossad-operation guest. Can you guess what it is?

“Fetzer is critical of the Israeli government. Does that make him an anti-Semite? No."

Like clockwork.

Nobody Calls Israel a Maoist State

At Tablet, Yair Rosenberg has an interesting retrospective on a 1961 debate between British historian Arnold Toynbee and Israeli diplomat Yaacov Herzog, regarding the legitimacy of the state of Israel. What is striking about the debate is how little the terms have shifted (particularly notable given that this was before Israel took over the West Bank and Gaza following the 1967 6-day war).

Toynbee was casually anti-Semitic (he considered Judaism to be a "fossil"), a sentiment that was hardly uncommon amongst elite Englishmen of the time period. And his main charge -- which prompted the debate challenge in the first place -- was his claim that Israel was morally equivalent to Nazis. Then, as now, this claim was trotted out without any sense of proportion: "Nazi" was little more than a stand-in for "person who did bad things"; because Israel had undoubtedly done bad things in the War of Independence, Israel was akin to a Nazi state. The problem, as Herzog observed, is two-fold.

First, "Nazi" is not in fact accurately used to describe an otherwise run-of-the-mill state that committed some wrongdoings. To diminish Nazism to such genericism is in effect a form of Holocaust denial -- it replaces the incredible magnitude and gravity of the Nazi Holocaust with a vague wave at condemnation. One sees this too with how some people treat racism -- stripping away the sheer sweep of centuries of ruthless murder, rape, terrorism, and enslavement; replacing it with some bromide about how for awhile we may not have quite lived up to our highest moral ideals. And if that's all racism ever was, then sure, every time President Obama suggests a policy proposal we find objectionable really is "just like slavery."

Second, if "Nazi" really does mean nothing more than "state which has committed a wrongdoing," then not just Israel is guilty. The UK is a Nazi state. America is a Nazi state. India is a Nazi state. Each of Israel's Arab adversaries is a Nazi state. Palestine will be a Nazi state. So why, then, should Israel be uniquely called out for being a Nazi state? If "Nazism" really is that mundane, it's almost not an observation worth making. But what's really happening is that Jews are being asked to meet an idealized standard of justice expected of nobody else, and when they inevitably fail to do so it is not seen as failing "normally", but rather as sharing space with the most monstrous of monsters.

But all of this, to me, raises another questions, which is "why Nazi?" If what we're really talking about is just a banal form of evil -- or hell, even if we're talking about much more serious, extreme evil -- Nazis are hardly the only choice we have. As offensive as the "apartheid" state analogy is, I will credit it as being less offensive than calling Israel and Jews Nazis. The reason people use Nazi this way -- divorced from the actual historical significance of the term, untethered from any proportionate sense of what the Nazis actually did -- is that it wounds Jews. That label appeals over all other ones because it has the unique capacity to hurt Jews on account of their Jewishness. It's akin to "criticizing" a Black person by calling him a plantation owner, or a lynch mob leader. It gains its power from a history of oppression, and when you are leverage historical oppression against the oppressed, that's prima facie evidence of racism or anti-Semitism no matter what your motives are.

Within all this, it is important to remember what the Holocaust actually "establishes" as relevant to contemporary discussions about Israel and Jews. Many people contend that Jews think the Holocaust has rendered them "perfect", unassailable, or immune from criticism. They seek to leverage the rhetoric of the Holocaust against Jews so as to remove this allegedly illicit gain, this wrongful bounty we illegitimately seized after being so lucky as to have been subjected to mass murder. But the Holocaust does not establish Jews are perfect -- it establishes that non-Jews aren't.

The fact of the Holocaust and other acts of anti-Semitism doesn't establish that Jews are unassailably virtuous. Why would it? There's nothing about oppression that purifies its victims -- imperfect people can be victims too. What it establishes is that non-Jews are not perfect; it destabilizes the hegemonic presence of non-Jewish voices and thus creates space for Jewish voices to be heard. To the casual observer that looks like a claim that Jews are "perfect", but that's only because Jews are claiming the right to speak on equal terms with a non-Jewish presence that had previously arrogated to itself a label of universal transcendence.

The frame that oppression makes the oppressed "perfect" is really more of a reactionary step. The framework sets up for Jews (and other minorities) a standard they can't possibly meet. And once they fail to meet it, it justifies stripping the label of "victim" and returning to the status quo where they can safely be ignored. It obviates the need to problematize the non-Jew in favor of providing a temporary elevation of the Jew to non-Jew status, contingent on the Jew maintaining a standard of conduct that nobody else can or is expected to meet.

(Original Tablet link via Daniel Goldberg)

Shining Moments

As he departs office as President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reflects on his greatest accomplishments:

Outgoing Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said during a farewell ceremony that publicizing his Holocaust denial was a major achievement of his presidency.

“That was a taboo topic that no one in the West allowed to be heard,” Ahmadinejad said in a speech Sunday, according to the Iranian Fars news agency. “We put it forward at the global level. That broke the spine of the Western capitalist regime.”
Ahmadinejad’s remarks on the Holocaust appeared on the Fars news site in Arabic, but not on its English website, which covered other aspects of the speech.

Some things never change.

But perhaps more interesting was the response of the incoming Iranian President:

President-elect Hassan Rohani described Ahmadinejad’s anti-Israel remarks as “hate rhetoric” that had brought the country to the brink of war, the German news agency dpa reported.

Some things change quite a bit. Very interesting.

Free Speech as Good Speech

I'm less interested in the particular story that Spanish Jews are pushing for stronger "hate speech" laws (though anti-Semitism in Spain is rampant, including mainstream embrace of the vicious extremist Gilad Atzmon) than I am in this accompanying anecdote:

In 2009, the Spanish daily El Mundo interviewed Holocaust denier David Irving, listing him as an “expert” on World War II. The paper’s editors said the interview was constitutionally protected free speech. The Anti-Defamation League called the interview “an embarrassment to Spain.”

I read that paragraph and think to myself "people, people: it can very easily be both."

But the point is that "it's free speech!" has come to mean "it's good, salutary (or at least unobjectionable) speech." I suppose one could blame the passage of "hate speech" laws for this phenomenon on the grounds that they imply that "bad" speech will be censored, so speech that is outside the purview of the hate speech statute presumably carries the implied sanction of the polity, but the problem is that this same rhetoric occurs in the US too. A person who is being criticized for saying hateful or bigoted things will almost invariably cry "free speech!" This displays not only a colossal misunderstanding of First Amendment doctrine, but is a complete non-sequitur to boot. Something can very much be "free speech" and still an awful, awful thought. It's like an even more sophomoric version of Tablet's defense of Anna Breslaw, if one can imagine such a thing.

Martyr

There is not that much to say about the White Supremacist anti-Semite who opened fire at the Holocaust Museum today. I want to obviously give my thanks and respect to Stephen Tyrone Johns, the brave security guard who died defending the museum, as well as my condolences to his family.

As for the shooting itself, well, it is a very scary thing. Nobody should be under any illusion that a rise in right-wing extremism will not result in terrorist actions against Jews. Nobody should be under any illusion that we've gotten beyond anti-Semitism in America; that it is something Jews don't have to think about anymore.

What a Despicable Fuck

Iranian delegate to the Durban Review Conference accosts Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, calls him a "Zio-Nazi".

There should be a special resolution at the end of this conference specifically condemning that delegate, for embodying the viciousness, bigotry, and hate that this conference is (purportedly) warring against.

Holocaust Anxiety

For better or for worse, the Holocaust remains an important focal point for dialogue in the Jewish community -- both internally and externally. It is a central organizing point of Jewish experience -- probably the most important event in Jewish history (even more than the establishment of Israel) since the destruction of the Second Temple.

My family, however, was not directly affected by the Holocaust. All of my immediate ancestors had immigrated to the United States prior to World War II (seven of my great-grandparents were immigrants -- the eighth was born in the US as well). It seems like most Jews have a relatively close relative who is or is descended from survivors. I don't. I feel awkward talking about the Holocaust as something that personally affects me when I don't have that ancestral connection many other Jews have. It feels almost like cheating.

We did have a branch of my paternal grandfather's family which had remained behind in Europe. We never heard from them again, and we assumed that they had perished, until a few years ago (in my lifetime) we suddenly reestablished contact (this wing of the family also includes my "twin" David Schraub, who now also resides in Chicago. Small world). Obviously, I'm delighted that they all survived. But relating this experience feels dangerous to me; almost akin to Holocaust denial. The classic response to Holocaust denial is "where do you think all those Jews went?" My family offers a counterpoint: we simply lost track due to the war. Again, this is anxiety-producing, because clearly I don't want my main familial intersection with public discourse about the Holocaust to be buttressing the deniers.

I don't believe that I am actually distant from the Holocaust. It is an accident of ancestry that my family was relatively unaffected by the genocide -- I still know that were I there, my life would have been forfeit as well. And, knowing that the Holocaust was not some insane aberration but rather the extreme end of the continuum which governs how Jews are treated, the "lessons" of the Holocaust are as potent for an American-descended American Jew as they are for our European or African or Middle Eastern cohorts. Insofar as the Holocaust still is a normatively meaningful event in crafting policy or engaging in ethical deliberation, I have as much claim to it as any other Jew. I really do believe that.

But still. It's alienating. I don't feel like I'm a credible speaker for my own experience, and that hurts.

White Out

This picture, from a Swedish protest against the Israeli Davis Cup team at Malmo, Sweden (which went on to defeat the Swedish team), gets at one of the more pernicious elements in the way anti-Israel criticism operates.

Israel came under significant criticism for its use of White Phosphorus in the Gaza campaign. I'm not an expert on international law nor the law of war, so I might be wrong in the details, but here are the facts as I understand them. White Phosphorus' primary function is as an illuminating device and a smoke screen, and it is incontestably legal to use it against military target for these purposes. It also can be used as an anti-personnel device due to its potential to cause severe burns. The legality of this use is disputed, but the weight of the evidence seems to be that it is forbidden.

The critiques of Israel were not that it was using White Phosphorus as an anti-personnel device. Rather, the criticism was that it was being used (as illumination and smoke screen aides) in dense urban environments where it was known it would affect civilians. Again, the legal status of this use is open for criticism: The Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, Protocol III (of which Israel is not a signatory to) prohibits indiscriminate incendiary attacks against military forces co-located with civilians, but exempts materials whose incendiary properties are secondary, like White Phosphorus. Still, it would be a fair claim that morally if not legally such use should be highly constrained, as the potential for unintentional damage to civilians would seem to be very high.

So, that's where I'm at: there are at least some grounds to allege that Israel used White Phosphorus in violation of the laws of war, though this is hardly beyond dispute; the case that Israel used WP in a way that isn't consistent with the highest moral standards, by contrast is much stronger. Hence, I don't think there is any problem, per se, with criticizing their usage.

But, I do think there is a problem with what the Malmo protesters compared it to. Zyklon B was the gas used in the planned, deliberate murder of millions of Jews in the Holocaust. The usage of Zyklon B was not a "war crime" in any meaningful sense, as it wasn't used in the context of a battlefield: it was just Hitler's preferred method of executing his genocide. The atomic bombings of Japan killed over 200,000 people, nearly all civilians. Napalm was used as an anti-personnel device and unlike WP its primary purpose is as an incendiary -- making its use in civilian areas a clear violation of Protocol III (the US, it's worth noting, is not a signatory either). I don't know what event they're referring to with Mustard Gas, so I can't comment on that.

Israel's WP use has not been alleged to have caused a single death, albeit severe burns on a few dozen victims. That's bad, of course, but it doesn't put it in the same breath as the other weapons on the poster. Of course, the Holocaust comparison is particularly repugnant, and in a significant way represents a form of Holocaust denial: If one can't understand why using White Phosphorus in a military campaign (which harms a handful of civilians but is responsible for zero deaths) is distinguishable from rounding up millions of civilians and gassing them to death, you clearly don't understand what the Holocaust was.

By trying to group Israel's actions into categories it clearly doesn't belong, the protesters significantly distort the terms of the debate and implicitly counsel responses to Israel's actions that would not be justifiable outside cases where they actually were doing something like napalming civilian areas. Ultimately, this is another example of criticism as moral hatred, with all the implications that flow therein.

There is very little probability that "criticism" such as this will have any meaningful impact towards creating circumstances of justice for the Israelis and Palestinians. But that is not its intent. Its intent is to externalize the bad actors as supreme evildoers, affirm that the protesters are not them by drawing strict lines between those inside and outside of society, with the latter group worthy of whatever hatred, scorn, prejudice or violence that is heaped upon them. It is primarily self-indulgent, and for that reason repugnant when actual people are suffering from the fact that too many people are content to mouth (or scream) ideological platitudes rather than work for solutions.

Benedict 180s

Pope Benedict has made an abrupt turn-around on the Richard Williamson scandal, demanding that he repudiate his Holocaust-denial if he is to be readmitted into the church. This comes after a furious reaction by the Jewish community to the rehabilitation of Mr. Williamson, who was to be readmitted to the Catholic religious body as a gesture of reconciliation with its radically conservative wing. Previously, the church had brushed aside the outrage, with Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone saying he considered the matter "closed" after Benedict denounced Holocaust deniers last week.

It is good to see the Vatican take this step. It would have been better if they hadn't so badly screwed up in the first place, then tried to airily dismiss the legitimate complaints of the Jewish community. But late is better than never. It'll be interesting to see what Williamson does.

Back In The Fold

Pope Benedict XVI has reinstated four Catholic bishops previously excommunicated by Pope John Paul II for their implacable opposition to liberalizing reforms. One of the bishops is a Holocaust denier. Jewish organizations are, predictably, outraged, but at this point I'm just resigned. Pope Benedict has also given greater prominence to a prayer wishing for the conversion of the Jews. Though I was optimistic at first, his tenure in office has been outrage after outrage.

So what else is new? I think institutional Christianity has long since proven that its default position is of hostility to Jews. Sometimes, it deviates, for a little while, but by and large it eventually reverts to the mean. The Catholic Church is no different, and I don't really think that these problems are ones that are traceable simply to this Pontiff. When Pope Benedict passes on, the odds are much, much better that his successor will be of his cut, rather than that of John Paul II.

UN Passes Resolution Condemning Holocaust Denial

The Washington Post has the story, including charming testimony by the Venezuelan delegate who, "while supporting the resolution," argued that Israel's "excesses under the pretext of legitimate defense has led to a new holocaust against the Palestinian people." Nice. Clearly they understand what happened in the Holocaust. Of course, I can't be too surprised. After all, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez claimed that Israel's Lebanon campaign was "doing the same thing as Hitler," or "perhaps even worse."

In any event, A. James Rudin notes that, while only Iran formally disassociated itself from the resolution (neither it nor any other country formally cast a vote against the resolution), 88 countries abstained from the vote, a full 46% of the General Assembly. Rudin claims many of the abstaining states were Arab or Muslim. This does not appear to be completely accurate--the resolution was adopted "by consensus" (without a vote). What I assume he means that 88 states did not sign on as co-sponsors (103 did--that would tally to Rudin's 46%). I don't want to rain on the parade though, so I'm curious to see which Arab and Muslim states did sign as co-sponsors. I will point out that both Egypt and Indonesia spoke out in favor of the resolution (though I don't know if they were co-sponsors). Anyone who has the full list of 103, please drop me a line.