April 2006

(CBS/AP) Thousands of people joined celebrities and lawmakers at a rally Sunday urging the Bush administration to use its political muscle to help end genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region.

“Not on our watch,” the crowd began chanting as a parade of speakers lined up for their turn on a stage on the National Mall, the Capitol serving as a backdrop.

“The personal motivation for a lot of us is the Holocaust,” said Boston-based Rabbi Or Rose of Jewish Seminarians for Justice. “Given our history and experience, we feel an obligation to stand up and speak out.”

Yes, we should. We should not hide that the prevention of Genocide is a Jewish issue. As the NYTimes notes,

Darfuris are sprinkled throughout the United States; one of the biggest concentrations in the United States of the Fur tribe, about 80 to 100 people, is in Portland. The violence, Darfuris say, started long ago but worsened in 2003, when militias backed by the Arab-Islamist government razed villages.

“The killings happened daily, daily, daily,” said Mansour Ahmed, leader of the Fur local community association. “We are surprised that the world is standing by.”

Outrage over the silence resonates with Jews.

“This sense of loneliness is something that Jews know very well,” said Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch of the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in New York. From the time Mr. Zuckerman was a small boy, his parents have taken him to synagogue, observed Friday evening Sabbath at home, and volunteered in the community. When he was a Hebrew-school seventh-grader, he learned about the Holocaust and other genocides.

“The worst part is that we’re letting it happen again,” he said recently.

One should be able to separate between the obligation to help and the idea that helping must include selfish motivation. Many systems of ethics–and especially Western Ethics–are based on a fundamental assumption of autonomy, leading one to the rational conclusion that all action undertaken is for selfish ends. Thus, before taking action, one asks “what’s in it for me.” Other systems of ethics might be on the other side of autonomy–complete subjugation–which, due to a complete lack of autonomy permit the freedom of the subject to do whatever they’d like as long as it does not conflict with the orders of the sovereign–thereby creating a situation in which a person does things either “because she’s told” or “because she feels like it.”

Jewish ethics, on the other hand, are based on a heteronomos idea, one that roots the individual within a community and makes the individual responsible for the community’s upkeep. This dissuades a person from asking “what is in it for me,” since the good of the community counter-balances the good of the individual, persuading the individual to do things that might not immediately be good for her in the understanding that the overall good of all is affected by doing good deeds.

This system of ethics uses historical memory to justify correct action: one is required to remember the slavery in Egypt, the materialism of the fleshpots, as “bad” and to be avoided at all costs. Thus, Jewish ethics requires a person to treat a stranger with respect not because you desire to get something out of it, but because she was a slave in Egypt. The obligation is not fulfilled with an immediate thought of payback; instead of being future oriented, Jewish ethics have their justification in the past.

The current situation is a clear case-in-point: Hypocritical organizations such as CAIR–who have done nearly nothing to motivate their constituency against the genocide–claim that the Jews are manipulating the media and public opinion by using the issue of the Genocide in Darfur for Jewish nefarious purposes because CAIR and others who ascribe to “me first” ethics only do things after asking, “what would we get out of this.”

But much of the Jews involved have a completely different way of thinking about ethical questions such as whether or not one should be active against Genocide. Many if not all of the Jewish organizations and individuals involved in the protests have been influenced by the Jewish ethic that is repeated during the Passover Seder every year: remember the past and use it as a template as to what should not happen in the future; Just as we would not want to return to the slavery of Egypt, and therefore act to prevent it, we certainly don’t want to permit humanity’s return to the killing fields of Treblinka.

Therefore, forget CAIR and those organizations who excuse their lack on involvement by blaming it on the Jews. The rally was another positive in a long journey to wipe the scourge of genocide from human history–and I look forward to more action in the future.

[See more pics on blogs here and here and on Flikr here. [HT to Laya for these articles]

I recently heard Shalem Center fellow and New Republic correspondent Yossi Klein Halevi put forth what he called a theology of the center. I don’t want to make a mistake summarizing the details, but I wanted to get the main point out there for discussion.

Yossi used Pesach and Purim to represent two different extremes of the Zionist movement. Purim Jews are obsessed with non-Jewish enmity toward the Jews; Pesach Jews are focused only on the universal ideas of freedom and liberation for all.

Zionists of the Purim camp led us blindly to settle Yesha and look in suspicion at any cooperation or agreement with the Arabs. The Pesach Jews were so enamored with universal rights that they forgot about our very real enemies and the real dangers inherent in being naive in the Middle East. Both these camps have failed us.

You can see where this is going: the center Zionist position is one that incorporates the Purim and Pesach aspect of our experience and proceeds from that point.

To me it sounds somewhat like the Cabdehu Vchashdehu idea, but it is of course much deeper. It is about what it takes to realistically fight for freedom and human rights without self-abnegation. About how to be a liberal without abolishing yourself.

This Sunday, April 30, tens of thousands of people will descend upon Washington D.C. to share their alarm and outrage at the ongoing genocide in Darfur. The event has gotten a lot of press before it even began, and that is a good thing. What I think is a bad thing, however, is if all of the energy poured into tomorrow ends up perceived as a call for more negotiations between the government of Sudan and the rebels. Taking this “negotiations are best” approach, the NYTimes writes,

The best possible solution would be for the Sudanese government and the rebels to agree to the peace treaty draft that mediators at the Abuja talks handed to them on Tuesday. Osama bin Laden’s recent tape accusing the United States of plotting to dispatch “Crusader” troops to Darfur to steal its oil wealth under the pretext of peacekeeping underscores the risks that would come with sending in a United Nations or NATO peacekeeping force against the wishes of the government of Sudan.

But the African Union force that is currently on the ground is pitifully inadequate, as the ongoing carnage shows. So it is incumbent on China and the Arab world to join the Bush administration in pressuring the Sudanese government to sign onto the peace deal and allow the U.N. troops. The deadline for talks can be extended. Obviously, the troops shouldn’t be American; that would just play into nationalistic concerns in Sudan. But troops from Muslim countries, particularly Pakistan and Morocco, could be used as part of a peacekeeping force.

If the world applies enough pressure, Sudan will back down. Tomorrow could be an important moment. We just wish there were rallies in Beijing, Cairo and Riyadh.

I agree with the end, not with the beginning. Negotiating with a genocidal regime in the midst of supporting gangs of rapists is not only immoral and unethical, it is also stupid. Force is not a thing to be looked down upon–the Jewish tradition, which holds “Thou Shalt Not Kill” amongst its ten most important rules, still permits one to use violent force if someone. is out to kill you or someone you love.

And for those who regret the Jewish association with the event, I can only imagine how upset they’d be if non-Jews would have protested while the Holocaust was raging. Yes, I used the Holocaust card. If you can’t use the Holocaust card to oppose genocide, what good is Remembering?

A report from a Paksistani paper references a close aide to a key Iranian cleric (one of Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s main sources of inspiration), about the big worries in Tehran:

An international Zionist conspiracy, an American bid to enact regime change in Iran and extra-marital sex — these are the main dangers facing the Islamic republic today.

Nice to know the Zionists are more fearsome than extra-marital sex. But a quote like this nicely shows how anti-Semitic stereotypes can masquerade as anti-Zionism. An international Zionist conspiracy comes across as just too similar to a worldwide Jewish conspiracy.

The hidden message in words like these also gives some insight as to why many people had such a strong reaction to the recent Walt-Mearsheimer “expose” of a worldwide “Israel lobby.” It is true that there are people all over the world who organize on behalf of Israel. It’s called politics, passion, solidarity. But in the hands of the Iranians and Waltsheimer, it becomes something much more sinister.

The way I see it, there are two ways in which the Holocaust is qualitatively distinct from all other genocides: its objective, and its denial. There are other reasons why it was horrible, yet these are the two that make it not just special to Jews, but objectively different – that make it not just ‘a holocaust,’ but ‘The Holocaust.’

Its objective was unique from other genocides in that the goal was to wipe out an entire people right off the face of the earth. I know, any genocide by definition is an effort to kill off a people. There is an important distinction though, which – not to diminish the pain caused in other genocides – is at least worth discussing. Most other genocides, to my knowledge, don’t begin with one group’s desire to exterminate the other. Rather, they seem to arise out of political/military/other disputes, when one group decides to just kill as many as possible of the other as a way to win that dispute. Sometimes the goal is control of a government or military, sometimes the goal is territorial…it may be fair or unfair, but it’s there. The Hutus and Tutsis were killing each other for control of Rwanda, the Arab militias of Sudan want control of that land’s territory and resources, Serbia wanted to hang on to as much of Yugoslavia as they could, and so on. Anyway, then the debate ensues between the one side that claims all’s fair in love and war, and the other side that says you just can’t target peaceful civilians on purpose. I’m not bringing this up to justify anything; “the ends don’t justify the means,” as they say. But my point is, this debate doesn’t even apply to the Holocaust. In that case, there was no ends-means calculation. For Nazi Germany, killing the Jews wasn’t a means to an ends; killing the Jews itself was the ends. Again, I’m not trying to in any way justify or diminish the evil of other genocides…the suffering caused in those cases is just as painful as ours. I’m simply saying that this makes the Holocaust qualitatively different, that this distinction offers additional insight into human nature and history, and that if we simply dismiss the Holocaust as a common event distinguished only by its scale then we’re missing something.

Secondly, Holocaust denial. I’m not sure what to say about this…I just don’t understand it at all. With every other genocide, there are people who may try to justify or rationalize them any way they can, but nobody tries to deny that they ever happened. That right-wing Serbian party that was in the news a few weeks ago for defending that general…they might justify Kosovo and Bosnia and all that, but nobody claims it never happened. People try to justify American slavery based on the plantation system or racism or simply states’ rights to have slavery, but nobody denies that American slavery ever existed. People can point their finger over what happened in Rwanda, but everybody knows that what happened there, did in fact happen there. So great, if you want to be a neo-Nazi or a crazy Jihadist, go ahead and say the Holocaust was justified. But to deny it outright? What is so special about the Holocaust that people can claim it never took place at all (and with witnesses still live, no less)? Can somebody help me understand how this happens? To claim that the Holocaust never happened is like claiming that the Earth is flat. So first of all, if somebody gets up in front of the world and announces that he believes the Earth is flat, there are two things he shouldn’t have: 1) credibility, and 2) a nuclear bomb. (Sorry, I tried to resist talking about Iran, but it’s just so hard.) Secondly, I think the phenomenon of Holocaust denial is an indication that there is some other underlying distinction about it, though I can’t quite put my finger on exactly what it may be.

According to the Jerusalem Post there have been further meetings between Prime Minister Olmert and Defense Minister Designate Peretz to revise the coalition agreement the two men signed. It seems there was public outcry over the record size of the proposed new Israeli government. This is as it should be. 27 ministers and two new ministries plus a bunch of new deputy ministers was incredibly wasteful. Anyone who has spent any time in Israel and has dealt with government red tape knows the last thing Israel needs is a bigger bureaucracy.

Now, with both Prime Minister Olmert and Defense Minister Designate Peretz seeing a little light they realized that they had to cut down the bloated government. Good! They woke up and smelled the coffee. A bunch of Labour MKs (plus Uriel Reichmann, formerly of Shinui and recently of Kadima) get upset because they can’t get some extra little bit of power for themselves or their chosen ministry they wanted to run. Boo hoo! It’s sad to see politicians who want to lead the country acting like a bunch of spoiled children. By The Jerusalem Post’s count Prime Minister Olmert would still have a 64 seat center-religious-right coalition without Labour. Perhaps Peretz, as his party’s leader, needs to remind his rebellious MKs of that. No one party is essential–not even Labour.

Israel’s leaders need to put political squabbles behind them and deal with the real challenges posed by Iran and ongoing Palestinian terrorism.

The enemies of Israel and the Jewish people picked Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah) to call for a new Holocaust, one that would destroy Israel.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahemdinejad, renewing his calls for Israel to be destroyed, said:

Outgoing Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz warned:

NEWSFLASH: UN Special Envoy Alvaro de Soto has just declared: “”We are witnessing a potentially dangerous deterioration of the situation in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

What is the cause of this deterioration in the Israel-Palestinian conflict?

the dispute between the new Hamas-run Palestinian government - which refuses to recognize Israel - and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas - whose Fatah Party recognizes the Jewish state - escalated to a point over the weekend where Hamas accused Fatah of a “plot” to overthrow the government and Fatah accused Hamas supporters of inciting civil war.

“After protest marches and clashes between Fatah and Hamas supporters over the weekend, efforts are under way to ease tensions between the Hamas-led government and Fatah,” he told the UN Security Council.

Oh. Wait…what? So we’re seeing the deterioration of internal issues within the Palestinian fledgling state? Oh. Huh. Maybe it is time the world starts viewing the Palestinians as a human beings that can clean up their own garbage when they dirty their waters–or, alternatively, can run a good government if they’re not pampered. This is not a deterioration in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s growing pangs.

Does Israel bear some responsibility? Sure. Israel could, theoretically, bend over and open the borders so thousands of Hamas and Islamic Jihadniks will creep on in and…you get the picture.

Guess what–a new day has dawned. It’s time for the Palestinians to act like a nation–and due time for Israel to get out of Palestinian demographic areas and set a border once and for all.

I came across this weird story describing how General George Patton “looted” an important copy of the Nuremberg laws during the war.

And it’s not only in America where the big brass get to take trophies.

“[Famous Archaeologist Yigal Yadin] was sometimes forced to deal with the theft of important artifacts, occasionally by prominent political and military figures. In one instance, where the thefts were commonly attributed to the famous one-eyed general Moshe Dayan, he remarked: “I know who did it, and I am not going to say who it is, but if I catch him, I’ll poke out his other eye too.”

Ah, powerful generals and proconsuls. Where would Europe’s (yes, and some American) museums, fences and auction houses be without them? It just goes to show that all the strictures in the world can’t divorce war from loot and pillage. Some, sophisticates like Patton and Dayan, take pottery and paper. Others take more gruesome trophies.

It makes Judaism’s still troubling though once revolutionary laws about looting and pillaging far more logical to the modern person. Because, as it turns out, even in an era of lasers and lance missiles, war’s primitive brutality is not just a result of necessary “collateral” damage but occasionally one of conscious human choice.

This brings to mind one of the more troubling justifications for Zionism. Genius thinker, author and Zionist, Micah Yosef Berdichevsky, believed that Zionism was meant return physicality to Jewish existence: the sword, the body, the stomach. This physicality had been expunged, both consciously and uncousciously, throughout the period of exile. He unearths the repression of this element of Judaism in his opus “Sinai and Gerizim.”

As I once heard Dan Miron lecture, Berdichevsky’s fiction reflects this. His stories often describe a normal Jewish shtetl that in one surreal moment descends into a sanguinary rage (see the story The Red Heiffer for a perfect example). This is the unnatural manifestation of physicality and brutality that other “normal” nations express in the course of everyday free existence. Zionism, with Jews returned to the responsibilities of existing as a free nation, will solve this by allowing for a “natural” expression of this repressed physicality.

A troubling theology of Zionism, to say the least.

I think Berdichevsky’s ideas have some bearing on the problem that many Jewish anti-Zionists have with Zionism. They cannot accept the idea of Jews using power to defend their independence as a nation. On the other hand, it is also true (believe it or not Iran) that violence and war is not something Israelis want or feel they need to be “normal.” It is most often Jews of the Diaspora that romanticize the army here. Most Israelis would be happy skipping it altogether, if we could. Which, in a roundabout way, may prove that Berdichevsky was right. Zionism may have created integrated Jews who do not crave physicality in some twisted way, since they grow up in a country full of “pysical responsibility.”

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