I started this thread wondering why anyone was anti-semitic in general but I think ‘clannish’ is a perfectly fair and apt description. Jews in this thread said to think of it as a tribe and you can only gain acceptance as a convert if you gain approval from the tribe. That is synonymous with ‘clannish’ to me. I am not following your point and I think your analogy is completely irrelevant.
Well, it’s not used as a synonym for “tribal”.
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Every group intermingles with other groups, even clans. Jews as a viable population would not exist over thousands of years if they weren’t selective in the ways that intermingled with other groups because the numbers were too small to sustain themselves without that self-selection.
Not true. For centuries Jews were a cohesive set of bloodlines because we were functionally imprisoned in ghettos and/or persecuted with pogroms and such. Absent that persecution, it’s highly unlikely that Jews would have remained any more cohesive than, say, the Picts.
Nor is it really all that unlikely that Jews could maintain an ethnic identity without being clannish. The current populations of Irish citizens and people of Irish descent isn’t, IIRC, terribly different than the total number of Jews on the planet. And yet when’s the last time you heard Irish people referred to as being “clannish”?
Also, you’re missing the historical context.
Sigh, because “clannish” when applied to ethnic groups only seems to be applied to Jews.
I don’t believe I’ve ever heard it referencing Mormons, Muslims, WASPS, African-Americans, Armenians or countless others.
It’s similar to the way the term “articulate” only seems to be used when referencing black people or when 90s basketball announcers referred to a player “having a great work ethic” you could guarantee he was white and if they referred to a player being “a great natural talent” it meant he was black.
Considering how most American Jews wind up marrying non-Jews it’s safe to say that people who describe them as “clannish” either don’t know what the word means or they are don’t know much about American Jews.
I have a hard time thinking of any other explanation.
Its fairly ironic that you reference Dershowitz here as he’s probably the most prolific offender. The guy uses his influence to intimidate college professors who write critically of Israel and I know of at least one instance where he managed to have a professor’s tenure denied over a book about the issue.
You can read about it on wikipedia here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dershowitz–Finkelstein_affair
Or listen to Noam Chomsky talking about it Here: http://www.democracynow.org/2007/4/17/noam_chomsky_accuses_alan_dershowitz_of
If you think that Noam Chomsky son of a rabbi is an anti-semite or biased against Jews you can have my preemptive lol.
You can also watch an illustration of the strengths of Dershowitz’s positions vs Chomsky in their debate here: http://vimeo.com/10646695
For the cite hogs who will ask for cites to studies that don’t exist to prove the clanish point either way without their own cites to refute, you should be in love with Chomsky’s unending stream of evidence for his positions and be fairly ashamed of good ole’ Dershowitz’s lack of credibility.
Nowhere in that post do you provide any evidence to support your position that pro-Israel supporters tar all critics of Israel as anti-Semites.
Also, before attacking Dershowitz like that you might keep in mind he’s been advocating Israel withdraw from the Occupied territories and have them replaced by an independent Palestinian state at least since the 1970s.
I’m also confused by your rather odd suggestion that I’d accuse Chomsky of being an anti-Semite. I’ve never said he was, though, amongst other things he’s an apologist for Holocaust deniers as well as for genocide-committers(the Khmer Rouge).
As for Finkelstein, he got denied tenure due to his own rather questionable actions.
Beyond that, while I don’t think Chomsky is an anti-Semite claiming he can’t be an anti-Semite because his father was a rabbi is asinine.
Both of Karl Marx’s grandfathers were Rabbis yet he made many anti-Semitic claims.
Show me where Chomsky ever was an apologist for holocaust deniers or genocidal actors such as with the Khmer Rouge. These claims are patently absurd and invented and pretty much the same as calling him antisemitic. You illustrate my point very well in your response. Chomsky is a major critic of the Khmer Rouge and one of the few people who still highlight its historical importance.
Finkelstein published a scholarly, researched book about Israel that shows them in a bad light for actions that should show them in a bad light. The inability for academics to research and make public their findings about whatever they find worthy of study is a massively chilling threat to academic independence. Finkelstein did nothing but produce high quality work and was only denied tenure because of the fragile and reactionary sensibilities of staunch Israel defenders interfering with tenure decisions who don’t care what is done in the name of the Israeli state.
Dershowitz? The guy who called Jimmy Carter a bigot because he had the temerity to criticize Israel? (Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid - J. Carter)
You want to see the depths to which some of the more rabid Israel-supporters can sink, watch Jonathan Demme’s documentary Jimmy Carter: Man From Plains.
But then, I suppose Jonathan Demme must be a “bigot” too. Only explanation, right?
Come on Spoke, if you’re going for nonsense, go all out. It wasn’t because Carter criticized Israel, it’s because Carter had a puppy and Dershowitz hates puppies!
Or, ya know, because Carter’s book was objectively filled with errors, distortions and outright lies which Carter knew were lies because we have actual records of him being corrected and then later going on to use the same lies. Carter is a bigot and one who deliberately distorts information, when he doesn’t simply invent it, in order to support a bigoted narrative, which is that Israel and Israelis are evil and bad and Palestine and Palestinians are blameless and good.
But no, you’re right, it’s because Carter has a puppy.
(One will also note your not-too-subtle obfuscation).
The question was whether or not any and all criticism of Israel ends with the criticizer being called an anti-Semite. Providing a single case where a bigot was actually called out on his bigotry is not really going to support anything but a “ZOMG Carter builds houses!!!” sort of diversion.
I said that it is easier to think of Jews as a “tribe” merely to explain, in an anthropological sort of way, how Judaism does nor fit neatly into the categories of either “race” or “religion” - which are the categories that most people are familiar with. Jews are not a “religion” because you can be an athiest Jew, and Jews are not a “race” because you can be a Black Jew.
Now, “tribe” has all sorts of truly unfortunate connotations - one tends to think, among other stereotypes, of cartoon native americans scalping settlers, or of cartoon headhunters boiling missionaries in a pot. I did not mean that, any more than I meant that all Jews regarded each other as part of the same clan. That’s not how it works.
Though the thought of a group of New York Jews wearing bones through their kippahs and boiling Jehovah’s Witnesses in a big pot is very entertaining, it is sadly, not very realistic - and neither is the notion that Jews nepotistically and “clannishly” gang together, simply because, from an anthropological POV, they can roughly be described as a “tribe”. On the contrary, Jews tend to be a most divisive lot, probably because they lack any sort of central authority to organize them together - a Reform Jew and an ultra-Orthodox Jew will recognize each other as being “Jews” but otherwise have very little in common!
Well, for one, because of historical events such as the Oil Embargo and Arab terrorist attacks, the Israel/Palestinian issue came to the fore at exactly the same time as the development of a backlash against broadly-described “European Colonialism” - in the 70s. This made anti-Israeli prejudice extremely attractive to the European hard Left, who had a soft spot in their hearts (some would say, in their heads :D) for “anti-colonial freedom fighters”. The notion being that Israelis can be cast, more or less, as oppressive European “colonialists”, doing down the “natives” in the fine old Euro style that, sweet balls of light that Euros had evolved into, Euros had just abandoned. The Oil Shock and terrorism gave the “cause” much visibility.
Of course this narrative had a few holes in it. For one, half the Israeli population was itself as middle eastern as the Arabs - they were the Mizrahim, mid-east Jews booted from millenial residence in Muslim-majority countries. For another, unlike “colonialists”, the Israelis had no “metropolitan” country to go back to if they wanted.
However, never mind that, Israelis are first-worlders and thius fine proxies for the European narrative of anti-colonialism and anti-racism.
Naturally, anti-Semitism may play its part in this (Jews can be conveniently “like Europeans” while at ane and the same time being the “other”), but it isn’t of necessity a part of this narrative. That’s how you can get (for example) leftist Jewish academics who hate Israel with an irrational passion. Another part of that is the overall feeling, on the part of both some leftists and some Jews (and many who are both), that it is more moral to be oppressed than to be an oppressor. The traditional Jewish self-image - to be both introspectively moral and oppressed - is one that they love; Israelis they hate, because they are seen as brash, annoying, aggressive, nationalistic, and oppressive - the opposite of all these good old fashioned (European) Jewish qualities. Israelis (and to an extent, north american Jews) tend to see these “good old fashioned Jewish qualities” as a loser’s creed and have no patience with it.
Indeed, to the extent that actual European Jews who moved to Israel changed their names and adopted a whole new language (ditching Yiddish as a “slave language”, a language of bondage, self-deprication, the ghetto) and adopted, symbolically, a whole new personality - based on Hebrew, patriotism, and apparently-miraculous success.
This then is a basis for the clash having nothing, really, to do with anti-Semitism - between two visions of what it means to be a Jew. The “old fashioned” Jew is far more attractive to the (broadly speaking) left, and the “new fashioned” Jew is far more attractive to the (broadly speaking) right. This, in spite of the fact that the “new fashioned” Jews are sometimes highly socialist in bent. To the left, the “new fashioned” Jews seem intent on repeating all of Europe’s mistakes - hence the superior, lecturing tone that some take on the subject. To the “new fashioned” Jews, these leftists seem to be happier with Jews who are perpetual victims and losers, and they have no intention of being victims and losers just to gain their approval!
That’s right. Keep calling Carter a bigot. That will win you converts to your cause.
Untoward Parable is absolutely right about Jews being clannish. But don’t forget, they’re pushy too, always mixing in where they’re not wanted! Tricky, tricky, tricky. As to why they’re still hated, well they musta done something. Just sayin’.
A person can be an anti-Israeli “bigot” without being a Jew-hater. The two refer to different things. One is an irrational hatred of a specific country, and the other is an irrational hatred of the Jewish people as Jews.
My impression of Carter is that he has an irrational dislike of Israel as a country. By “irrational” I mean willing to invent things he ought to know are not true, or distort facts known to him personally, in order to make Israel, and Israelis, look worse than they are. Sadly, his published writings contain examples of this.
Whether that makes him a “bigot”, or simply a man caught up in his own polemic, is I would say largely a matter of semantics.
There’s a vanishingly fine line between calling someone a bigot in this context and calling them an anti-Semite.
I think Dershowitz’s charge of bigotry is meant to imply anti-Semitism without actually saying it. That way he gets to keep playing his little semantic game and continue to claim that he is not accusing Israel’s critics of anti-Semitism. It’s the same game we see on these boards.
Frankly, that’s nonsense. It’s a classic straw-manning of the argument.
You are doing what you are accusing Israeli supporters of doing - mixing up “Israeli” and “Jew”. Even when people are carefult to distinguish them.
The charge is sometimes made that those who support Israel are forever claiming all critics of Israel are anti-Semites. Seems you are saying that all people who criticize anti-Israeli polemics are, even if they say “anti-Israeli” explicitly, “really” accusing them of anti-Semitism.
Assuming that is true, it is literally impossible to ever criticize someone for engaging in anti-Israeli polemics, no matter how biased or irrational they may be.