Shoah not a heartwarming story.

Ron Rosenbaum is as ticked at Hollywood's Shoah-fest as I am. Defiance is the only one I saw, and the only one I wanted to.

But that's what The Reader is about: the supposedly difficult struggle with this slowly dawning postwar awareness. As Cynthia Ozick put it in her essay: "After the war, when she is brought to trial, the narrator ['Michael Berg'] acknowledges that she is guilty of despicable crimes—but he also believes that her illiteracy must mitigate her guilt. Had she been able to read, she would have been a factory worker, not an agent of murder. Her crimes are illiteracy's accident. Illiteracy is her exculpation."

Indeed, so much is made of the deep, deep exculpatory shame of illiteracy—despite the fact that burning 300 people to death doesn't require reading skills—that some worshipful accounts of the novel (by those who buy into its ludicrous premise, perhaps because it's been declared "classic" and "profound") actually seem to affirm that illiteracy is something more to be ashamed of than participating in mass murder. From the Barnes & Noble Web site summary of the novel: "Michael recognizes his former lover on the stand, accused of a hideous crime. And as he watches Hanna refuse to defend herself against the charges, Michael gradually realizes that she may be guarding a secret more shameful than murder." Yes, more shameful than murder! Lack of reading skills is more disgraceful than listening in bovine silence to the screams of 300 people as they are burned to death behind the locked doors of a church you're guarding to prevent them from escaping the flames. Which is what Hanna did, although, of course, it's not shown in the film. As I learned from the director at a screening of The Reader, the scene was omitted because it might have "unbalanced" our view of Hanna, given too much weight to the mass murder she committed, as opposed to her lack of reading skills. Made it more difficult to develop empathy for her, although it's never explained why it's important that we should.

Sharp rise in antisemitic incidents in Britain

Maybe 15 years ago, who could have thought Britain would get like this.

Incidents recorded by the CST include violent assaults in the street, hate emails and graffiti threatening "jihad" against British Jews. One disturbing aspect involves the targeting of Jewish children. A Birmingham school is investigating reports that 20 children chased a 12-year-old girl, its only Jewish pupil, chanting "Kill all Jews" and "Death to Jews". In another incident a Jewish schoolgirl reported being bullied at a non-Jewish school because of the Gaza conflict.

New book on Israel lobby

Dan Fleshler has a new book that looks good. He posts some advance reviews from on his own blog. Excerpted from one, from Shlomo Ben-Ami:

This is a brilliant study of two intriguing contradictions pertaining to the story of America’s Israel lobby. One is the contradiction between the reality and limits of Jewish power, on the one hand, and the popular perception of that power, on the other. Another has to do with the yawning gap between the Israel lobby’s hawkish policies and the liberal views of the majority of American Jews.

Prosecutorial miscunduct

Kind of important. Not so much because Khalidi was wrong -Cohen probably goes too far in a few ways, like in titling his post- but because there's a preosecutorial culture in which these mistakes are impossible to correct.

What the Ghettos were like

Samuel Kassow (Who Will Write Our History?) was on Leonard Lopate yesterday. A lot of interesting info about, in particular, the Warsaw Ghetto.

Why don't we talk about antisemitism more

There's a fascinating series of posts up by Richard Jeffrey Newman at Alas, a blog and at his own blog, It's All Connected. Having been away, I'm still catching up on it (and the various related posts scattered about the internets). One of the best passages, one I found enlightening, is this:

Indeed, it often feels these days that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the only context in which a discussion antisemitism is taken seriously. It gives antisemites an opportunity to cloak their antisemitism in an argument that has a considerable amount of moral high ground built into it, and to call foul when Jews and our allies say, “Wait a minute! We’re not going to let you get away with antisemitism just because the policies of the Israeli government deserve criticism.” More importantly, I think, for Jews and our allies, precisely because antisemitism is not taken seriously enough as a phenomenon in and of itself, a reality of Jewish lives independent of what goes on between Israel and the Palestinians, and precisely because secular Zionism and that State of Israel were founded largely in response to antisemitism, discussions of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict become one of the few opportunities we have to talk about antisemitism period, all of it, how it has worked and continues to work all over the world. The result is that what should be a conversation about Israel and Palestine and the people who are living and fighting and dying there ends up bearing the burden of, for example, not only every instance of antisemitism I listed above, but the history out of which that antisemitism arises and that continues to give it context. No single conversation should have to bear that burden.

There's a lot to say around that. Like, when Morton Klein of the ZOA, a man and organization I almost always disagree with, attacked Archbishop Desmond Tutu... Many people took this as an example of how "the lobby" silences critics. But take a look at what Klein wrote. In fact, Tutu did say some pretty sketchy things about Jewish power in America. And worse.

Speaking in a Connecticut church, Tutu said that “the Jews thought they had a monopoly on God; Jesus was angry that they could shut out other human beings.” In the same speech, he compared the features of the ancient Holy Temple in Jerusalem to the features of the apartheid system in South Africa.

I not only happen to think Klein is right to criticize such statements, I think Klein is well within his rights to criticize. I don't think it's likely Klein is right that such pronouncements should "disqualify him [Tutu] as a speaker," but it seems right to me that Klein should be able to argue that. Tutu may or may not be disqualified from his post as oracle of moral authority, but in my mind his moral authority is certainly qualified. So, having found that criticisms of antisemitism tend to be as accurate as criticisms of any oppression by oppressed groups, I'm reluctant to even entertain people who say that criticism of antisemitism is stifling debate.

But Newman has a serious point that the debate over Israel/Palestine is forced to unfairly bear the burden of the conversation on antisemitism. And so I've been wondering why it is that we don't talk about antisemitism more in other contexts. Actually, I've been going back to that question. I think, if you're Jewish, you've probably asked yourself that before.

Homeward Bound

It was astounding to feel more connected to a country in the Middle East than I had ever felt for America (maybe it's because people keep questioning my Americanness). It was something like the connection I feel to the Dominican Republic. But it was very different. Now what's a girl like me doing with three homelands?

I'm not ever likely to make aliyah. I'm a cold-weather kind of guy. But, uh, I know the feeling.