brooklyn13, You still haven't said why you leave Haaretz and all the others i use in posts critical of the way Israel has handled this situation out of your attacks. That suggests serious bias on your part. No doubt about that. It's one of the reasons that based on your posts to date it's easy to see you as relatively silly, ignorant, duplicitous whatever, at least on the matters you involve yourself in here.
Israel is said by it's Zionist leaders to be a Jewish homeland. The Jewish nature of Israel is one of the characteristics of the place which people like Ben Givr, Smotrich, Netanyahu et al are bent on preserving. It is not the Palestinians in the government who war, not them who most strongly resist the creation of an independent Palestinian state. You emphasis the ones who yell "Death to Israel." You ignore the more Palestinians who have lived peacefully side by side with Israelis for decades.
The Palestinian story in Israel is one of dispossession, suffering and loss. The story of the Jews in Israel is a story of exploitation, subjugation and gain.
I'd say, without knowing for certain, the Zionists driving the wars are Jews. I believe the top decision makers in Israel are Jewish. It is always in that contest that i use the word Jews. Bottom line, i have never targeted Jews on the basis of their nationality, religion or even on the basis of an imaginary race. I have never targeted all Jews just because they are Jews. All argument of yours which does not recognize that is distraction on your part from my simple point being discussed here which has always been that Netanyahu's reaction to Hamas's terrorist attack continues to be a inhumane over reaction. And that the Jews in control at present are Zionist Jews of the most predatory kind.
And yes, as i posted that error i thought maybe it was MTG of the space lasers, just couldn't be bothered then to check as it's as unimportant as much of your content. Oh, and so you know it's Boebert, not Bobert.
Lastly, there has been an ongoing debate which i've read off-and-on of for years. Your reasoning, yours not mine, brought it to mind:
Is Judaism an ethnicity? A race? A nationality? Trump signs an order and provokes an identity crisis.
Amy Lummer, left, and Jordyn Barry present a book about latkes to children at a Barnes & Noble in Tysons on Sunday during an event meant to share Hannukah traditions. (Julie Zauzmer/The Washington Post)
By Julie Zauzmer Weil December 19, 2019 at 6:00 a.m. EST
“People keep coming into my office asking to talk about it,” Jewish educator Jordyn Barry said as she stood in a Barnes & Noble at Tysons Corner Center wearing a menorah on her sweater and a light-up Hanukkah hat.
They want to discuss a question that’s both new and as old as Abraham: What is Judaism anyway?
It’s a religion, yes — but then again, many who identify as Jews aren’t religious. It’s passed down from parents to children and bears recognizable genetic characteristics — but then again, Jews come in all colors and racial backgrounds.
Ethnicity? Nationality? Faith? Culture? Heritage? Even Jews don’t agree on just what Judaism is. And President Trump has thrown that eternal question into sharp relief by signing an executive order meant to strengthen protections against anti-Semitism on college campuses, where the debate over Israel and Palestinian rights has grown increasingly toxic in recent years.
Trump’s order .. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-combating-anti-semitism/ , which he signed at a White House Hanukkah party last week, says anti-Semitism is punishable under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act — a clause that deals only with race, ethnicity and nationality, not discrimination on the basis of religion. The order says Jews can be considered to have been targeted on the basis of their nationality or race as Jews.
Jewish Americans, who are presumably the beneficiaries, are deeply torn about what it all means.
President Trump displays his anti-Semitism order last week. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)
Barry, director of innovation and teen engagement at the Pozez Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia, said that before last week, the only time anyone asked her whether Judaism is a nationality was when she taught seventh-graders about the Holocaust. This week, adults walked into the JCC in Fairfax to share their thoughts and seek hers.
“It’s definitely brought the conversation of Judaism as nationality to the forefront,” Barry said.
[Insert: Note, brooklyn13, Never, rightly or wrongly, even as a child, have i ever seen Judaism as anything more than a religion. So fuck you on all your arguments suggesting any other of me. ]
When hate crimes are on the rise, dark corners of the Internet are flooded with vitriol about Jews and both the president and members of Congress have been accused of trafficking in anti-Semitic tropes, the Trump administration’s attempt at protection is viewed with both suspicion and, in some corners, relief.
“Throughout Jewish history, categorizing Jews into a separate group has led to othering and sometimes violence. So we’re just cautious,” said Rabbi Jonah Pesner, the head of Reform Judaism’s Religious Action Center, the denomination’s government relations arm. “Any good-faith attempt to protect any minority, including the Jewish minority, from anti-Semitism or violence is a good thing. … We’re just cautious about government defining who we are and government defining who is part of us.”
Pesner was in Chicago at the denomination’s biennial convention, along with 5,000 other rabbis and Reform Jews, when Trump announced the order. Immediately, discussions of how to accommodate increasingly diverse American Jewish communities, and ensure synagogue security amid rising anti-Semitism, expanded to include conversations about whether Trump’s order had defined Judaism properly.
“We have people here who are born Jewish and not. Black, brown, white, Asian. People with Muslim and Christian members of their extended families,” Pesner said. “You have people who chose Judaism because of its theology … and you have people who don’t understand Torah study and don’t believe in God.”
In Washington, some responded to the discussion with a Twitter hashtag, #MyJudaismIs, and filled in the sentence with non-nationality-related responses such as “queer,” “fiercely feminist,” “loving the stranger” and “debating whether or not gefilte fish is actually good.”
Early Americans commonly viewed Jews as a separate racial category, wrote Yale professor of African American studies Matthew F. Jacobson, who cited a 1775 text that described “the nation of the Jews, who, under every climate, remain the same as far as the fundamental configuration of face goes, remarkable for a racial character almost universal, which can be distinguished at the first glance.”
That perception became far rarer after the Nazis’ racially motivated Holocaust. As the United States grew more ethnically diverse, Jewish Americans increasingly were seen as white, a characterization that brought its own awkwardness and ambivalence.
[Chuckle, and Jesus a Palestinian has always in polite LOLOL white culture been portrayed as white to, eh. No wondering why. Yeah, white is better is a joke isn't it.]
“There is such variation: Yes, I’m white in the sense that as I walk around publicly, I have all the privileges allocated to white women,” said Karen Brodkin, a University of California at Los Angeles anthropologist who has written extensively on the subject of how Jews came to be considered white. “But there’s a hell of a vicious history of anti-Semitism.”
Anti-Semites and white nationalists clearly see Jews as “other.”Witness the demonstrators in Charlottesville in 2017, chanting “Jews will not replace us,” and hate-filled Twitter attacks on Jewish members of Congress, including Reps. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) and Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), which focus not just on their leadership in the ongoing impeachment inquiry but also on their heritage.
Jews continue to see Judaism as a biological inheritance, not just a religious or cultural community, researchers at Clark and Brown universities found — especially those who have only one Jewish parent and those who do not belong to a synagogue. For them, Jewishness is inherent and immutable in their genes.
Attacks on Jews, which are on the rise, are sometimes based on Jewish religious practices or moral values. The suspect in the gun attack that killed 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue last year had denounced Jewish support of HIAS, the religious refugee resettlement organization.
Other attacks, including verbal and physical assaults on college campuses, have been based not on religion but on perceived support of Israel.
And some anti-Semitism, including many of the online taunts, is based on perceived ethnic characteristics shared by Jews.
“What we’re seeing now being directed against the Jewish community is something that is earth-shattering, that we have not seen in this country for decades,” said Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, 45, adding that members of his Ohev Sholom congregation in Washington are more fearful about being visibly Jewish.
“People have told me that they’ve removed their mezuza scrolls from their doors so people will not know they’re Jewish,” he said, bringing up last week’s fatal shooting in a kosher supermarket in Jersey City. “Not one. More than half a dozen. And that’s people willing to tell the rabbi that. … It is heartbreaking.”
Emergency responders at the site of Jersey City shooting last week. (Seth Wenig/AP)
In the 1970s, according to General Social Survey data, 99 percent of U.S. Jews were categorized as white. Most of them were Ashkenazi, a European ethnic lineage specific to Jews. In this decade, data shows that 11 percent of U.S. Jews are not white — and some say that is an undercount, since people of color are sometimes overlooked by researchers trying to tally Jews. There are Jews of Ethiopian descent, Sephardic Jews from countries such as Iran, Iraq and Egypt, converts from across the racial spectrum, children of color adopted by Ashkenazi or Sephardic Jews — and all of their children and grandchildren.
[A growing awareness. Gawd. One of the reasons i was kicked out of Sunday school about 70 years ago was because i knew then not all Jews where white and that Palestinians were not white as Jesus was portrayed. As Jesus still is portrayed. ]
Calling Judaism a racial or ethnic identity inappropriately erases Jews of color, some say. And suggesting that the federal government considers Judaism to be a nationality or ethnicity can add to confusion that Jews already face in their schools and workplaces.
“I’m worried now that the incorrect belief will be that I’m Israeli or that I’ve even been to Israel,” said Zoe Terner, 19, a leader in the Reform movement and a student at the University of Florida in Gainesville. “My family’s from Russia, I’m pretty sure.” (She said she doesn’t see Russian as her nationality, either — nor Austrian, another place from which her relatives fled, facing religious persecution — but just American, based on the place where her family found safety.)
Rabbi Jacqueline Mates-Muchin of Temple Sinai in Oakland, Calif., said even young children often debate how to categorize Judaism. “When they’re asked what their race is or ‘what they are,’ they say that they’re Jewish,” said Mates-Muchin, 45. “Often people tell them that’s not an ethnicity — that’s only a religion.”
Mates-Muchin, whose father is Ashkenazi and whose mother is a Chinese American Jewish convert, said she believes she is the first Chinese American rabbi. But she, too, feels “a Jewish ethnic identity.”
“We’re Ashkenazi. My family left Austria in the ’30s. They were escaping the Holocaust,” she said. “That story is really important to who we are.”
The increasing number of ethnicities represented in many Jewish communities doesn’t mean Judaism’s ethnic component is irrelevant, just changing, Mates-Muchin said. “We are developing a very distinctive Jewish American ethnicity and identity.”
Rabbi Aaron Alexander, co-senior rabbi at Washington’s Adas Israel Congregation, said he taught Hanukkah study sessions on two nights last week and both times participants spent the first 20 or 30 minutes asking questions about the executive order.
“Are we a nation?” they asked the rabbi.
Like many good Jewish questions, the answer was both no and yes.
No, Alexander said, Jews are not a nation-state: “To start to suggest that Jews could be considered a separate nation — that has been and will continue to be dangerous for Jews, to be seen as having some other nation that they are more loyal to than the one in which they live and pay taxes.”
And, yes, he added, Jews’ sacred texts tell them that they are connected to fellow Jews, as one people, wherever they live. The Hebrew words for the nation of Israel, “am Yisrael,” he noted, appear throughout Jewish liturgy — sung and recited in synagogues, schools and community centers.
Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated where Reform rabbis met for a biennial convention last week. The meeting was in Chicago.
brooklyn13, I've told you before i see Al Jazeera as credible because of what i read. You oughta know fcs after reading varied sources over year, while always being aware of how much you appreciate straight no bs talk you get a feel for what is credible and what is not. SMH, as i think, I don't see Haaretz talking about Al Jazeera as you do.
"It's amusing that someone who posts articles from Al Jazeera as credible news calls other people "ignorant". And they say irony is dead."
You condemn Al Jazeera for one reason, Right? It's funder. That's the sort of reasoning you use which i see as relatively ignorant. Perhaps you may gain more insight about how i approach sources from this 11 year-old Brookings article, just about an hour ago bumped into it:
Al Jazeera: The Most-Feared News Network
Shibley Telhami June 15, 2013
[...]
And even though Al Jazeera is often accused of bias or of an ideological bent, it has been bold in ensuring presentation of multiple views, including presenting Israeli views dating back to the 1990s, when few other Arab stations dared do so, as well as airing Bin Laden tapes, Iranian views, and hosting or covering speeches and news conferences of American officials—including then-secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, American military commanders and spokesmen, and White House and State Department officials—during the Iraq war. So while Al Jazeera officials understood and catered to their audience, they also made sure they always aired views that challenged, sometimes even offended their audience.
There was also a price to be paid for Al Jazeera’s extensive coverage. Almost every government in the region was offended by Al Jazeera at some point, which resulted in significant pressures on the Qatar government. The United States accused Al Jazeera of incitement, and even China in 2012 was angered by Al Jazeera coverage, taking action against Al Jazeera English.
The question is, for what purpose does Qatar support Al Jazeera? What does Qatar gain?
One cannot completely rule out an ideological position of the emir. Al Thani once described himself to me as a “Nasserist,” or an admirer of the Pan-Arabist Gamal Abd al-Nasser, and Al Jazeera has indeed hosted Arab nationalists as regular commentators, including Egypt’s most prominent analyst, Muhammad Hassanein Heikal. But the network also hosts prominent Islamists, such as Sheikh Yousuf Al Qaradawi. Beyond any progressive or pan-Arab aspiration of the leadership, the strategy is simply seen to be in the long-term survival of the Qatari leadership and of the emirate itself.
To begin with, Qatar is a small, ultrawealthy state across the Gulf from Iran and neighboring a larger and more powerful fellow member of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Saudi Arabia, with which it has not always had an easy relationship. Qatar considers the United States its primary strategic ally and hosts a major American base on its soil—not something popular in the Arab world. After the 1993 peace agreement between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization, Qatar was among the most forthcoming of Arab states to reach out to Israel. For that reason, and for its propensity to pursue a policy independent from Saudi Arabia, the dominant Saudi-owned media, as well as the Egyptian media, made Qatar their favorite target of criticism.
Al Jazeera became an instant counterweapon. First, by merely overtaking the Saudi and Egyptian media, it deflected criticism against the emirate and its leaders. Second, by providing a credible fresh news outlet that focused on Pan-Arab issues, it gained accolades that balanced the perception that it was a key American ally and friendly to Israel. Third, the success of Al Jazeera provided Qatar an instrument of leverage in dealing generally with its detractors. Better to be close to one’s rival when the rival is funding the primary media source in the Arab world.
But the Arab uprisings created both new opportunities and new challenges for Al Jazeera. On the one hand, Al Jazeera seemed on the right side of history: It was a central part of the information revolution that enabled the uprisings, and the uprisings themselves created new opportunities for coverage as Arabs everywhere tuned in to the story. On the other hand, the Arab uprisings seemed nearly unstoppable. Could they sweep the Arab world all the way to the doorsteps of the Gulf monarchies, including the Qatari rulers themselves?
Potentially facing common threats, Qatar found itself increasingly closer politically to its GCC partners, especially its senior partner Saudi Arabia, despite their sometimes uneasy, even competitive relations. In the coverage of the uprisings in Libya and Syria, Al Jazeera and the Saudi-funded Al Arabiya took closer positions than ever. On GCC partner Bahrain, where a Sunni monarchy ruled over a revolting Shiite majority, Al Jazeera covered the story but only to a limited degree. Al Jazeera’s explanation focused on the lack of access allowed by Bahraini authorities, but it was hard to miss the Qatari dilemma, and hard to convince critical commentators that politics were not an important consideration. But Al Jazeera’s biggest challenge in pleasing its audiences was in the Syrian uprisings, to which Al Jazeera dedicated significant resources and made them its priority story for months. While Arabs were overwhelmingly sympathetic with the Syrian people against the Assad regime, they were heavily divided on the wisdom of external intervention, which Al Jazeera seemed to favor, increasingly reflecting the foreign policy position of the Qatari government on this issue.
In stark contrast to 1996 when Qatar’s role in regional politics was relatively modest, by the time of the Arab uprisings, Qatar itself had become a significant player in the geopolitics of the region: from leading the arming and funding of Syrian rebels, mediating among Palestinian factions, funding the reconstruction in Lebanon after the 2006 war, and providing more aid to Egypt than anyone else after the revolution, to sending military support for the campaign against Muammar Qaddafi in Libya. To the extent that Arabs were divided on many of the issues in which Qatar was involved, both Al Jazeera and Qatar were bound to come under greater scrutiny.
This opened Al Jazeera up to some criticism from some former admirers on the left. In an article for the Lebanese newspaper Al Ahkbar titled “Al Jazeera’s Autumn: The Fall of an Empire,”2 columnist Pierre Abi Saab conveyed a feeling shared by a sizable minority who had previously admired Al Jazeera:
After the spread of satellites in the 1990s, Arabs came to know two types of liberation. The first is social . . . and the second was political, with Al Jazeera, which imposed itself in a short time, regionally and internationally. It is the story of Alice in Wonderland. In a small rich state [Qatar], an exciting new information experiment was started, and bet on difference, courage, and professionalism. From covering the story to carrying the flag of the opinion of the other, an alternative media took shape that viewers of official television could never imagine, from the [Atlantic] ocean to the Gulf.
This surprising innovation became a source for the Arab individual who hungered to uncover what was unsaid, and to follow the political debate, even if in passing. How is it possible for a political regime that differed little from those around it to create this progressive opening, which made many ignore the strange mix of political constituents for the TV station: from the Iraqi Baath to the liberalism that legitimized Israel during one period, to an Islamist current that swallowed those who opposed it? Who cares? Arabs now had their equivalent of CNN that looks from another angle at events, from the British-American war on Iraq to the Israeli assaults on Lebanon and Gaza, ending up in the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions—history was taking shape live on Al Jazeera. Then the Qatari regime discovered a new hobby, and decided to become a sponsor of the Arab revolution. The station rolled over the Manama [Bahrain] spring like the Saudi tanks in order to “lead” the movement for change in Syria. Quickly professionalism began to slip, turning into intended deviations, then systematic lies, as is proven by documents and statements that have leaked out in recent weeks. Not that the Syrian regime is beyond tyranny and repression, but the media conversation took the revolt away from the people. On the rock of the Syrian tragedy, the kingdom of delusion was shattered. The station returned to its natural size. Suddenly viewers noticed that they are watching an official medium akin to those we see in all the authoritarian systems. It even surpasses the latter by virtue of its experience and reputation and claims of independence and objectivity. Today, scandals and resignations continue, leaving in the memory of the contemporary Arab media a deep wound named Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera Faces the Future
Despite such blistering criticism from within the Arab world, there is no evidence yet that Al Jazeera has lost significant viewership. On the one hand, its predilection (reflecting its funders) against the Syrian regime and its reserved coverage of Bahrain play well among the mostly Sunni Muslim population of the region. About 90 percent of Arabs also share Al Jazeera’s support for the rebels in Syria. But the push for international intervention in Syria is a source of deep division among Arabs, and this has opened Al Jazeera to criticism as the number of its media competitors has increased. Two other factors could play a role in determining Al Jazeera’s dominance: the emergence of alternative free media in newly democratizing countries, especially Egypt, and the increasing number of Arabs, especially among the young, who now get their news not from TV but from the Internet.
It is already clear that the open environments in Egypt and Tunisia have generated media that are far more attractive both to local audiences and to Arab audiences outside. In Egypt, whose population constitutes nearly one-quarter of the entire Arab world, there are many people with considerable journalistic talent and skill who have been stymied by the political control of state-supported media—indeed, so stymied that many of the most talented journalists left the country to work for the likes of Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya, and the BBC. The overthrow of Mubarak has brought far more diversity to the pages of newspapers and on television, both private and public networks, and a clear display of previously hidden talent. Popular television host Hafiz Mirazi, who had become a star first on Al Jazeera and later on Al Arabiya, has now returned to Egypt to host his own show on Egypt’s Dream TV. Muhammad Hassanein Heikal left Al Jazeera and joined Egypt’s private television station, CBC. Others will follow.
Egyptian media has the potential to eventually put pressure on other Pan-Arab TV stations. But the problem for any aspiring media competitor is not simply putting forth a credible product but also having the significant resources required to provide the kind of timely coverage of international and regional issues that Arab viewers now expect.
This alone is a potential barrier to objectivity. As yet there is simply not enough advertising revenue in the Arab world to sustain a competitive station, and the most substantial funds available for advertising come from governments and the elites around them, or from parties that do not want to alienate ruling elites, particularly in the Gulf region. Egypt’s new government, like its old, may want to invest heavily in state-sponsored media, but that will inevitably infringe on its freedom of expression, even in a more democratic Egypt. Local private stations that have proliferated may do well locally, but they will not have the resources to cover regional and international news competitively. And government regulators may try to limit the influence of private media, as they did in November 2012 by requiring Dream TV (a privately owned Egyptian station launched in 2001) to relocate its headquarters.
This resource dilemma for the Arab media means that even as the market grows more frustrated with existing stations like Al Jazeera, the scale of the enterprise dictates that there will be limited numbers of possible competitors and that those competitors will likely come with their own political baggage.
The same resource dilemma will ultimately affect Internet news as well, although to a lesser extent. Even now, as TV is losing news-market share to the Internet, all the successful TV stations have Internet sites, some of which are among the most popular sites in the Arab world, including Aljazeera.net. Inevitably, those sites that have the resources to provide the freshest information and to constantly update the news will likely do best in the marketplace. These emerging sites have to compete with websites with no geographic tie to the region, including popular news sites in the West and elsewhere— newspapers such as the New York Times and the Washington Post; news websites such as Foreign Policy and the Huffington Post; TV sites such as CNN, the BBC, and Fox; and even comedy news icons like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert—but as my polls show, the majority of Arabs who use the Internet go principally to Arabic-language websites. And those with resources—and agendas—will strive to use their resources to influence the new market of information and ideas.
Editor’s Note: The chapter also appeared on Salon.com on June 15, 2013.
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