UK Labour today released the text of the Chakrabarti Inquiry into anti-Semitism (and other forms of racism). I’m trying to think about how to describe it. “Bad” would not be fair – it’s not bad. “Milquetoast” is perhaps the best word for it. Shami Chakrabarti was put in an extraordinarily difficult situation when she was commissioned to lead this inquiry, and did her best not to offend anyone. And I’m not offended, so in that I guess she was successful.
But I am to some degree annoyed at myself that I’m not more annoyed at how small-ball it went. The non-procedural recommendations – “Zio” is a racist epithet, “resist” comparing Israel to the Nazis (is the temptation really that overwhelming?), don’t engage in stereotyping – would be insultingly banal if they did not in fact need to be said. But banality is the order of the day.
Chakrabarti thankfully doesn’t engage in any significant victim-blaming or lecture Jews on how we need to stop making anti-Semitism claims up for our own nefarious ends, so thank God for that. Yet everything in her report is calculated to be assure everyone that this problem is not much of a problem at all. David Hirsh’s reaction is here (his characteristically excellent submission to the inquiry is here), and I think it strikes some important chords. This is a superficial report to a problem with much deeper roots. One does not, upon reading the inquiry, get the sense that there is any true danger to Labour anti-Semitism. Nobody is really that bad, we just sometimes use some overwrought rhetoric in the heat of the moment that we should probably “resist”. Ultimately, I doubt these recommendations will hurt, but I likewise doubt they will do much to help either. The report condemns stereotypes but gives no guidance on how to root them out; it discusses bias but doesn’t even raise the issue that they might be implicit. It speaks broadly about the significant wrong anti-Semitism represents, but it shies away from directly considering anything to be anti-Semitic.
Perhaps most frustratingly, it does not address what to me is the most important issue of all – the epistemic marginalization of Jews and Jewish voices when we complain about anti-Semitism. Any effort to combat anti-Semitism will fail if it is not coupled with a commitment to take seriously allegations of anti-Semitism. The persistent drumbeat that anti-Semitism is a bad faith charge that serious people should not waste their time with is the single greatest barrier to Jewish inclusion in communal conversations. It suggests that we are unreliable narrators of our own experience – delusional at best, liars at worst. If that understanding is accepted, then Jews will never be able to be equal participants in dialogue because everything we say will be preemptively discounted – at least, if it doesn’t accord with the preexisting beliefs of our partners.
The Chakrabarti Inquiry should ideally represent the beginning of the conversation on combatting anti-Semitism, not its end. And judging by how the inquiry was received, well, there is more to be had in this conversation. The unveiling was yet another Corbyn catastrophe – a Jewish Labour MP was chased out the room after being accused of organizing a media conspiracy to get at Corbyn, and Corbyn himself possibly compared Israel to the Islamic State (reports vary on whether he said “Islamic State” or “Islamic states” – his written text suggests he meant the latter, but many people reported hearing the former). Corbyn certainly did nothing to protect his colleague who – in a press conference about anti-Semitism, no less – was victimized by an anti-Semitic trope of the precise sort Chakrabarti identified as being intolerable.
People who don’t take anti-Semitism seriously won’t fight anti-Semitism seriously. I do think Chakrabarti tried and delivered a seriously flawed but nonetheless sincere effort in her report. Jeremy Corbyn has no interest in fighting anti-Semitism, and so we can expect even the meager gains Chakrabarti gave to use to amount to virtually nothing.
via The Debate Link http://ift.tt/295r7Th
Tag: antisemitism
Sorry, this is more Corbyn rage, but HAVE YOU SEEN Kate McCann’s tweet? “Cannot believer what has just happened at Corbyn press conference. Jewish MP walked out of Antisemitism report launch in tears. Disgrace.” What the actual fuck is wrong with Labour?!?
Honestly, at this point, it’s Corbyn and his most obsessive followers (not going to blame all of them but some are getting scarily cultish). Like, I know a lot of this stuff started under Milliband, but they’re running out of excuses at this point. Some of the antisemitism accusations were disingenuous but this “MPs bought by Zionists” garbage is just plain antisemitism and it seems to be open season on threats to anti-Cobyn Labour MPs (which is 80% of them FFS). Of course, Corbyn also wasn’t particularly smart comparing Israel to ISIS during the unveiling of the anti-semitism report which, ironically, was actually pretty solid and worth reading. He ruined something he could’ve used to defuse this situation by sticking his foot down his throat in an unforced PR blunder that will cost him.
Though given Boris Johnson’s refusal to run it sounds like the entire UK’s political scene is a disaster right now.
I’m honestly worried for almost everyone over there. I’m reading lots of reports of casual racism and antisemitism all over the place now. I want all our UK friends to stay safe.
The MP is Ruth Smeeth she was accused by a member of momentum, a pro-corbyn group, of ‘colluding with the media’ (specifically the telegraph I think) and being part of a ‘media conspiracy’ so you know…that’s great.
She’s since released a statement talking about how corbyn didn’t do anything while this was happening and adding her voice to the many calling for his resignation in light of that and no action being taken since either
This page is live updates on the leadership debate in the party more generally http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/30/angela-eagle-to-launch-labour-leadership-bid-in-battle-for-the-s/ and includes the statement she released (time for it is 2:30, page also includes statements from current and former chief rabbis and various other people about corbyns statement this morning – and the doubling down he did when confronted about it)
Look while ‘nazis are used as an aesthetic generic evil’ is a valid critisism in many cases in media (because it’s antisemetic, antiroma and actively harmful to Jewish and Romani people to be clear, not in the odd ‘this is about me’ way non-roma gentiles seem to critisize this and deffinitly not because it’d be ‘unfair’ to nazis)
It doesn’t apply to things like hydra or the first order that are created by Jewish creators as explicit stand ins for nazism (or neonazism) given that Jewish people do absolutely not view nazis as a generic, aesthetic, impersonal or unreal evil even if you do
the flip side of
other people taking jewish created symbols of anti-nazism (like
captain america) and making them…well even just not a symbol of
that rather than explicitly a symbol of the opposite, is what marvel
has been doing for ages (and what fandom does) which is taking the
things jewish creators were using to symbolise nazism itself and
making them not about that – diluting it down to some kind of
ambiguity or just flat out erasing it whichever. That also damages that important anti-nazi message in the work you’re doing it to.
Its part of the same
thing. Portraying explicitly nazi-symbolising characters as not nazis
should never be a thing you consider okay and to see people protest
cap being hydra and then also do this shows very clearly it is not
the antisemitism that bothers you in this situation and that you just
flat out dont get it.
A History of Golems [wip]
It’s 1944. My grandmother is a short women with dark hair and a big nose. She works as a cook in an inn somewhere deep in the Third Reich. She tells the innkeeper the little girl who helps in the kitchen is her daughter. In the dining room men with red armbands drink to the war, calling the little girl to bring them more beer.
Its 2004. I read a storybook about the Golem of Prague in the public library. I wonder what words could have the power to make clay come alive, to make a shield that can move on its own. That week I notice for the first time the security guards outside my synagogue.
its 1961. My father is thirteen years old, an adult of the community now, so when they come down the Jewish street again with bricks and torches he helps my grandfather sweep up the broken glass.
It’s 1941. Two boys from an immigrant neighborhood get their art published and spread to the whole country. It shows a man wearing red white and blue, punching the leader of a country we were not at war with in the face. They get threats. The Golem they’ve made isn’t enough to protect their families, dying across the sea. Captain America is only made out of words.
It’s 2016. I am drinking with people I suppose are my friends. One draws a swastika on my arm. He apologizes almost immediately but my head is full of the sound of breaking glass. There is no holy word in my skull to give me strength.
It’s 1944. My grandmother and the girl are arrested. The officer who turned them in asks that they be sent to a labour camp together, not to the death camps. Every Nazi had one good Jew.
Its 2011 and my english class is reading ‘A Diary of Anne Frank’. A classmate tells me America saved the Jews. I tell him my grandfather fought in the war, I tell him about the Warsaw Uprising, the resistance in Vichy France, I tell him that the United States sent children back to Germany to die. He shrugs. “Jews can’t protect themselves.” I think about Golems again.
It’s 1945. My aunt is dead. My aunt was not the little girl with my grandmother. The little girl lived to her nineties. My aunt was four. My grandmother could not protect her daughter but she could try to protect this one life. But my grandmother was not a golem. Any holy words in her head were wiped away by the time the camp gates opened.
It’s 2016 and Captain America has been declared a Nazi by the company founded on an image of Adolf Hitler being punched in the face. I think about the Golem of Prague. In the stories after the worst of the pogroms ended the rabbis wiped the holy words off his forehead, took the scroll out of his mouth and put him to sleep wrapped in knowledge and the words of G-d. I wonder if after having the power inside of him, that clay vessel can ever again just be clay.
Look. I’m a diaspora Jew. I don’t live in Israel. I have no family in Israel. I don’t contribute money to Israel. But when the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization says that the Western Wall, the most sacred edifice in all of Judaism, is nothing but a hitching post, how, exactly, am I supposed to believe that the UN gives a half a damn about Jews or our history when they are actively trying to erase it? This isn’t an anti-Israel resolution, it’s an anti-Jew resolution.
I didn’t see that language (hitching post) used anywhere. And the issues surrounding the Western Wall have to do with the displacement of Muslim families that live in the area. Your faith doesn’t trump the right of others to live in their homes.
Do you want an article with the hitching post language? Here.
And erasing Jewish history is antisemitism no matter who lives there. Take your condescension and antisemitism elsewhere. You clearly understand nothing about Jewish history or identity. You do, however, feel somehow entitled to speak over those who do have that knowledge and identity so you can get high on the ecstasy of sanctimony. Well, you’re not getting a free pass. Not this time.
Okay, so from that and some research elsewhere I see that in Muslim tradition the wall is holy as well, due to the idea that Mohammed (pbuh) hitched his horse Buraq to a place on the wall, where a mosque now stands. The resolution that UNESCO passed states that Muslims should have a right to worship at the Western Wall, too, and criticizes Israel for not allowing this.
Do you think Muslims shouldn’t be allowed to worship at the Western Wall?
The Western Wall and the Al Aqsa Mosque are two separate structues in two separate places adjacent to each other. Praying at one does not preclude praying at the other. Acknowledging the Jewish origins of the Wall is simple acknowledgment of historical fact. The Wall predates Islam by 700 years. It was part of the Second Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Stop talking. You’re embarrassing yourself.
March 31st, 2016: 524th anniversary of the Alhambra Decree
A few days ago I published the Alhambra Decree. Today, March 31st, 2016, is the 524th anniversary of the Edict of the Expulsion of the Jews. The Edict was not revoked until December 16th, 1968.
The thing that really gets me about a lot of fantasy and speculative works (include fic) is that the history of Jewish oppression is 9 times out of 10 used for the Featured Stand In Fantastically Oppressed Race in some way shape or form.
Tolkien’s dwarves are the worst kind of 19th-20th century Jewish stereotypes mixed in with our history of diaspora.
Dragon Age’s elves are a combination of the oppression and colonization of First Nation indigenous peoples and Jewish diaspora and ghettoization.
Not to mention we’re normally depicted as aliens in forms of sci-fi (Star Trek casts as both the good Vulcans and as stereotypes with the mercantile Ferengi) But wherever you go we certainly aren’t depicted as human.
The worst thing is is that these are shallow offerings of our history being used because they’re usually being written by gentile writers. DA’s Dalish elves and City Elves are coded as Jewish virtually everywhere, but one of the main elven characters, Solas, is going to be cast as a villain in future games. Because genocide is a much cheaper storyline than dealing with complicated ramifications of a people struggling with a millenia of diaspora and systematic oppression. And casting one of the coded Jewish characters as a propagator of mass genocide isn’t antisemitic at all, right?
I can’t tell you how discouraging it is to see our very real life stories getting used as cheap oppression bait when there’s room to tell nuanced and defined stories and characters IF we were the ones in control of these stories.
If you want to use our history for story you had better be committed to fully realizing that story and giving those characters a certain level of dignity.
But I truly don’t see that anywhere. Frequently I see even fans with their elven OCs or what have you not even bothering to research basic facts about what living in a diaspora culture looks like, or what that history does to you as an individual and the pressures you face that shape YOUR ENTIRE LIFE.
It just feels like both creators and fandom take all the history of people’s oppression for cheap tragedy points and conflict rather than using it to examine how we thrive, how we flourish, how we excel as a community and as individuals. Because that would require actually looking at us as humans, which considering that we’re already being depicted as dwarves, elves, animals, aliens, etc., tells you everything you already need to know about how white gentile authors see us.
Reblogging again until I see not the same few people and Jewish fandom noticing this because the rest of you are unnaturally quiet all of a sudden.
November 10th 1938.
German and Austrian civilians and authorities take part in a state pogrom, destroying Jewish businesses, synagogues, schools and ultimately, lives.
fearlessstateofmind backup 