Posted on 04/30/2002 1:16:50 PM PDT by Pokey78
I used to listen with scorn when I heard my parents' generation say that a Jew must always – metaphorically – be prepared to pack a suitcase and run. However settled we might be, however safe we might think we are, we can never be fully, one hundred per cent certain that we are secure. "They can turn on us overnight."
I understood their paranoia. They had lived through the Holocaust, and some of them had seen things at first hand which I have only ever seen on film. But, I knew, things are different now. I had never come across anything but the most prosaic examples of anti-Semitism, or ever felt for a second as if I was merely being tolerated – and that that toleration could stop. Sure, I get anti-Semitic e-mails after any article I write, but it goes with the territory. Black journalists receive the same sort of rubbish and know, as I do, not to be disturbed by the BNP-style ranting morons. I simply delete and ignore their messages.
I could not imagine anything more fanciful than the idea that my countrymen might turn on me. I am the third generation of my family to be born here and as British as anyone. Israel is an idea, and a country, which I support; but it is a foreign country with whose citizens I have nothing more in common than a shared religion.
I now know different.
I wasn't shocked when I heard about Sunday's desecration of the synagogue in Finsbury Park. I was depressed, I was frightened, I was angered; but I wasn't shocked. Over the past year or so, I have come to realise that my parents' contemporaries are right. The pattern of thousands of years of Jewish history does not change in one generation. However settled we might think we are, our lives can change in an instant. No group was more assimilated than the German Jews at the beginning of the last century. By what arrogance did I assume that mine would be the first generation in Jewish history which could escape threat?
Don't get me wrong. I am not for a second suggesting that I will have to pack my bags and leave. Britain remains one of the most tolerant places on earth, and I can barely imagine the circumstances in which I might be forced out of my own country. But I have started to hear things which I never thought possible in this of all countries, not from skinheads but from the mouths of people who I would never have thought capable of such things.
I first realised what I had been denying to myself – that anti-Semitism is now acceptable again in polite society – at a dinner party. There were six of us. I had known three of them for nearly two decades; decent, liberal sorts, who had, as students, signed up with me to all the right causes: protesting outside South Africa House, boycotting Barclays and demanding "no platform for racists and fascists". I would have sworn in court that they had not a bone of racism or anti-Semitism in their bodies.
We started talking about boycotts; specifically, Greenpeace's campaign against Esso. Could it work? Catherine (I've changed the names) said it would if people stuck to their principles. That's what she was doing: she was boycotting anything Israeli.
I winced. Yes, of course I know that disagreeing with Israeli policy does not always equate to being anti-Israel, or even anti-Semitic (although I have yet to hear anyone call for sanctions against Saudi Arabia for funding the suicide bombers and calling for more "martyrs"). But I had a sense that she meant something more than she was saying, so I tried, calmly, to draw her out. It became clear that she meant she was really boycotting anything Jewish.
What did that mean: Jewish-owned companies, or Jewish-run companies? And how do you define the ones you are boycotting: "What about Dixons?" I asked her. "What on earth are you talking about?" she replied. "What's Dixons got to do with it?" I told her that Sir Stanley Kalms, the Dixons chairman, is prominent in the Jewish community. She'd never thought about Dixons before but yes, she said, she would now start to boycott Dixons.
"Don't get at her," demanded David. "She's only saying out loud what we all think: the Jews need to be taught that, terrible as the Holocaust was, you can't rely on that excuse for ever – and certainly not to justify what you are doing to the Palestinians."
As it happens, I believe that Israel should withdraw from the occupied territories. But this wasn't a conversation about the rights and wrongs of Israeli policy; this was about me and my fellow Jews, who stick together, are different from everyone else, and need to be taught a lesson. "Why do you say 'the Jews'?" I asked. "You mean the Israelis." Catherine stepped in: "Israelis, Jews, you're the same thing. See – you're defending them now aren't you? Why are you doing that? Because you're Jewish."
Whatever I know about my loyalty to this country, others have a different view. They think of me as Jew first, and then Brit. Whatever I do, whatever I contribute, I will always be an outsider. Maybe I am simply more conscious of it today than before that conversation, but I see now, for the first time in my 37 years, what my parents' generation meant.
I have no desire whatsoever to live in Israel. But knowing that it's there, as a refuge, now means a lot more to me than I ever imagined it could.
I wonder if he's noticed what a pest-hole southern Africa has become since they all "signed up for the right causes?"
I find it natural in the English because I know them and how they think. Classical liberal (Whig) England gave us the notion of equality before the law, even if there remained social disabilities, and that's more or less what is still true in England: there is no discrimination against Jews in getting places at Oxford or Cambridge or in finance in the City, what discrimination exists is social.
What I said, and I maintain, is that it surprises me that any bright person raised in England would not understand that howevermuch the ethnic 'English' may be perfectly happy to admit others to the privileges of citizenship, and even the peerage, it doesn't mean they have to like them or socizlize with them. Young Mr. Pollard has been unobservant if he didn't realize this. Is it OK? No. Is it a fact? Yes.
I appreciate many things about the English, including their steadfastness generally and as our allies in particular. But, they are and always have been quite ethnocentric.
More people need to take the human nature into consideration and realize you can't change it and probably shouldn't try to pretend it doesn't exist. Since the beginning of time various groups have been at war or had long-standing disagreements in some form against groups of "Others"
You are so transparent.
At some point a Jew must have done you a bad turn. You live in Palm Beach County. I know the area has a significant Jewish population. Did that bad turn occur there? You toture yourself, by your own admition, by listening to a Jewish talk show host who happens to be quite Liberal. You quote her often. Seems like this would be something you could ignore. You can't seem to get past it.
I don't pretend to be a shrink. I do think you are obsessed with Jews and anything they touch. You spend hour upon hour here posting anything you possibly can find which can be perceived as being negative about Jews. The time you spend in this pursuit is stunning. Hours upon hours spent with those damn Jews in your sights.
I fully realize what you will return with here is the canard that "one can be anti-Zionist and not anti-Semetic." However, like it or not it is obvious to anyone who reads your posts that you have long ago left that notion behind.
In short you have an obsession. I think you have crossed the line from intellectual challenge and discourse. Your desire is to draw blood. The pain inside you seems to dissipate only by striking out at your perceived tormentors. What was it Larry? A promotion you didn't get? A woman you lost to a Jewish man? Or just an overall perception of dissatisfaction in your life that cries out for an outside source to focus your anger?
People who love FR and the Conservative movement have undoubtedly encountered your rantings. They realize the vast amount of time you must spend digging, constantly digging for the holy grail that will convince the rest of us the Jews are a scourge in this country and worldwide.
I for one feel sorry for you. The pain you must carry around must amount to a heck of a burden. Your obsessions and demons must be awful to carry around. I hope some day you are able to enjoy life once again. In the meantime whenever I encounter your obvious hate I will simply shake my head and tell myself,"what a waste".
This is how it always goes when Nazi socialists, the most jealous, mean spirited, spiteful, egotistical, control freak, soul dead, twice dead, moraless, chillingly banal in their mindless illogical evil, currs on the face of the earth are considered the enlightened elite.
Things must not be going so well in the plan to force Bush into making the American war on terror into an American/Israeli was on Arabs.
I appreciate also your insight into the ethnocentrism of the English. Many behaviors that stem from it are empirically indistinguishable from the obsession with class, so some of the things to which you refer I have attributed to the latter. Perhaps, I have indeed underestimated the ethnocentrism of the English.
Like you, I am grateful to the English for preserving for us the idea of representation in government that they themselves brought from the continent as part of the Teutonic tradition. I'm also grateful for the overall enlightenment of that society in comparison with the continental Europe --- the enlightenment, which we imported in the beginning of our own history. I do not miss, of course, their preoccupation with class and ethnocentrism.
Thank you again for your nice and informative note.
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