Tuesday, September 22, 2009

My Jew is a better Jew than you

Apparently, an article supposedly by Richard Falk is making the rounds, questioning Israel's criticism of the Goldstone Report. Of course, some people will say (as Philip Weiss, who is also Jewish, not-so-subtly does) that both are Jewish. What is neglected is that both were appointments of the UNHRC, which is itself part of the problem. (Fer chrissakes, Mary Robinson turned down Goldstone's position because she found the mandate biased from the start.) Falk was not merely terrible; he's a Truther who blames the Mossad for 9/11.

Converts to Christianity were often the most antisemitic, because they had to prove the sincerity of their conversions. I came across an article by James Baldwin recently which includes a relevant quote:
The poor, whatever their color, do not trust the law and certainly have no reason to, and God knows we didn't. "If you must call a cop," we said in those days, "for God's sake, make sure it's a white one." We did not feel that the cops were protecting us, for we knew too much about the reasons for the kinds of crimes committed in the ghetto; but we feared the black cops ever more than white cops, because the black cop had to work so much harder--on your head--to prove to himself and his colleagues that he was not like all the other niggers.
So long as antisemitism dominates, it doesn't matter if the people hired to criticize Israel are Jewish or not. They certainly have every right to speak for themselves, but they do not in any way speak for Jews (any more than Michael Steele speaks for Blacks). Just as Christians promoted converts, antisemitism continues to try to put up "Good Jews" to silence other Jewish voices. That's colonialism, plain and simple.

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