A coincidental mention of Rachel Corrie

Here.

Strangely, however, Jerome clearly intends Einstein on Israel and Zionism to be a powerful anti-Zionist statement. All the parts of the book that are not from Einstein’s own hand—the extensive passages of historical and biographical background, the introduction, the notes—are written in a spirit not just critical of Israel, but basically hostile to the very notion of a Jewish state. The book’s politics become clear as early as the dedication page, for Jerome has dedicated Einstein’s words “to the memory of Rachel Corrie,” the American teenager accidentally killed when she tried to stop an IDF bulldozer in the Gaza Strip.

Of course, Einstein was quite the committed Zionist. The article does deal with many ways in which he was a left-Zionist, but he was nonetheless a Zionist. I've seen people claim Einstein was an anti-zionist before. And Hannah Arendt and any famous Jew who never moved to Israel. Arendt wasn't a Zionist, but she supported the creation of a Jewish army and helped smuggle Jews into Palestine. But for anti-Zionists to claim these figures (who would surely disagree profoundly with a great deal of what passes for anti-Zionism today) is only an obnoxious attempt to salvage a good-Jew/bad-Jew dichotomy, to tell Jews how we are allowed to think.

Of course, Einstein was a Zionist. Though he favored cultural Zionism over political Zionism, he remained committed to Zionism after '48, when that choice became moot. As he said:

My relationship with the Jewish people has become my strongest human bond, ever since I became fully aware of our precarious situation among the nations of the world.

Closing comments

Over at Alas, A Blog, Ampersand has a strange accident of a post called an open thread where comments are closed. One of the items, a link to Muzzlewatch [and the real point of this post], which I normally will not read, is on the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival, which showed a film on Rachel Corrie. Upfront: every time I've come across the name Rachel Corrie, it's been about how evil I, personally, am. It's never been part of a real discussion of Israeli policy. Instead, I've been called to denounce Jews who support Israel's existence (for very good and real reasons I share) as evil and racist. Often enough, with the suggestion that I'm to blame for antisemitism because I won't. (And there's something, frankly, creepy about the way in which Palestinian supporters use Corrie's whiteness.) So, every time her name comes up, I have a Pavlovian reaction of ducking my head as if I were about to be hit. I find it threatening. And silencing, as well as simply not productive. I don't know specifically about the people who have called for the film to be removed from the film festival, but I have quite a bit of sympathy for the position.

Here's what Amp writes:

Jews censoring Jews department: The controversy over a documentary about Rachel Corrie being shown at a Jewish film festival, as well as over whether or not Cindy Corrie (Rachel’s mother) should be allowed to speak: “this woman has no business attending and speaking at a Jewish event like the film festival.” Disgusting.

From that, one might expect that the film wasn't allowed to be shown. Or, perhaps that Cindy Corrie is Jewish. She's not, and that's also not what happened. From the JTA (and Jewlicious):

Despite festival director Peter Stein’s plea not to interrupt or disrespect any element of the screening, including speakers before or after, many audience members hissed, booed and shouted at those whose opinions clashed with their own.

The booed opinions nearly always were supportive of Israel.

Although Jewish Voice for Peace, which runs Muzzlewatch, claims to take antisemitism seriously, the truth is, they only sometimes do. (They did, however, stop allowing comments when they were attracting a great deal of antisemitism they couldn't ignore. They do not seem to have considered how they contributed to that.) They don't consider, for instance, that concerns about antisemitism genuinely ought to limit the scope of debate in a great many ways in order to ensure that discussion is less hurtful and more productive. Or, rather, they claim the sole right to determine when the discussion is hurtful or productive. For them, other Jews do not have a right to say "I find that antisemitic." To do so would be "muzzling." Let me use an image (source) to point out that Jews muzzling debate is not a new idea. Notice "The meeting the Jews want banned." And "Come and hear what the Jews fear." Also note it's sponsored by the National Socialist Movement -- in fact, 1960s, British neo-Nazis.



If you look under the label anti-semitism at Muzzlewatch, it is the rare piece that is actually about fighting antisemitism. It is instead, "like a powerless female character in a film who threatens to yell ‘rape’ if someone gets too close, some Jewish groups are only too happy to cry ‘anti-Semite’ if you get too close." Although they describe this as "the nuclear option for powerless people," at least acknowledging Jewish oppression, even if it has no role in their analysis, I find that an obnoxious and stereotypical depiction of Jews. Their view is routinely so one-sided that they can get the facts of the SFJFF completely backwards. In short, I don't think they're a very good source of information.