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Announcement :: Right Wing |
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Arrogant, Cynical, Heartless: Another "scholar in residence" from the Program for Jewish Culture and Society: Oy Vey! |
Current rating: 0 |
by David Green
Email: davegreen84 (nospam) yahoo.com (unverified!)
Phone: 217-840-3979 |
26 Feb 2006
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The Program for Jewish Culture and Society at the U of I once again asks the question: Is it possible to be a "moderate" racist? |
The current scholar in residence hosted by the Program for Jewish Culture and Society is columnist and author Hillel Halkin, a “moderate” Israeli and scholar of Yiddish literature. What makes Halkin moderate is, beyond his scholarly writing, a patronizing rather than virulent tone vis-a-vis the Palestinians (see first excerpt below). He was a supporter of the comatose Sharon and his Kadima party, which is now what passes for moderation in Israel. Being a Yiddish scholar also serves to evoke an aura of sentimentality that makes Zionism and its openly racist practices more palatable, or at least less relevant.
I believe, however, that what this man stands for is clearly morally abominable, and that the field of Jewish Studies on our campus (and presumably on others) continues to distinguish itself in a manner which attempts to give a human face to Israeli racism and apartheid both in the occupied territories and within Israel itself.
As you can see below, he doesn’t even have much of a heart for poor Jews in Israel. So was the point of establishing a “Jewish state” so that Jews can have this sort of benign or malign contempt for each other on the basis of social class?
The view of “Jewish culture and society” promoted by PJCS is narrow and esoteric, politically backwards, self-serving to local Jewish leadership, academically embarrassing, and irrelevant to any genuine insight regarding the current dire state of affairs in the Middle East, either in Israel/Palestine or more broadly speaking. Nor does the program address fundamental issues of importance to Jewish-Americans regarding our history, ethnic and religious identities, and political interests and ideals, such as they are (see neoconservatism, Larry Franklin, and Jack Abramoff, and second excerpt below, for examples). By the way, these choices continue to exclude perspectives regarding the Sephardic majority of Jews within Israel (see the reference to poor Jews below, most who are Sephardic).
We must begin to face up to the fact that the “Fiddler on the Roof” is now serving at checkpoints in the occupied territories.
Following are three excerpts from Halkin’s articles:
1. Hillel Halkin on return and compensation for the Palestinians:
“From A Jewish point of view, of course, there can be no question of returning even a small part of the land and houses (the great majority of which are no longer standing anyway) that belonged to the Palestinians who fled in 1948. It's all ours now and it has to remain ours.
But that doesn't mean we can't say to the Palestinians: Yes it's all ours - but it was once yours and we took it from you. That's not something we have to apologize for; we took it because we needed it and wouldn't have had a country to live in without it. Yet it's still only fair that you should be paid for what we took. There's a difference between expropriation and theft and while we have no qualms about having been expropriators we don't want to be thieves.
In a word, compensation. No return of Palestinian refugees to Israel much less any return of their property but a willingness to pay for that property as any government guided by law pays for what it expropriates for the public good.”
2. Halkin on the alliance of Jewish-Americans with the Christian Right:
“All this would hold true even were it not the case that the Christian Right is today Israel's main bastion of political support in the United States at a time when the liberal Left has turned increasingly against it. One can certainly understand that this is a source of embarrassment and bewilderment for American Jews who find themselves deserted by old friends and embraced by perceived aliens. But embarrassment and bewilderment are not political strategies - and if the Jewish community of the United States has no coherent political strategy for defending a Jewish state that is under concerted attack it is Jewishly worth nothing no matter how many other worthy causes it makes its own. Ultimately Abraham Foxman will have to decide what worries him more: Praying quarterbacks or the future of the Jewish people.”
3. Halkin on poverty in Israel:
“Although cutting poverty in Israel depends on many things including more and better-paying jobs and better educational training to prepare for them smaller families would clearly help too. They would enable working parents Muslim and Jewish to support and educate their children better; make it possible for non-working parents especially mothers to go to work; would lower government expenditures and taxes - and would in the bargain help firm up Israel's Jewish majority.
We cannot of course simply abolish child allowances and let the children who now depend on them grow up in abjectness. If anything we should increase them - for children who are already born. But at the same time we should be thinking of policies whereby starting with an official cut-off date child allowances after a certain child would be eliminated. We have enough poverty without subsidizing the creation of still more of it.
There is nothing wrong with large families as long as someone else is not expected to pay for them. In this season of self-castigation for being a country that permits so much poverty let's remember that sometimes poverty is also the fault of the poor.” |
This work is in the public domain |
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Gevalt! |
by gehrig
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
26 Feb 2006
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