I was following your post and nodding in agreement until you used the UK / US as an analogy.

I’d like to suggest it could be used as an analogy in a slightly different way. The vast majority of the electorate do not approve of the policy of the UK government re Iraq. But the UK government uses it’s somewhat spurious mandate to speak, particularily on the international stage, on behalf of us all. As though there was no dissent to their policy, as though it wasn’t Blairs’ biggest mistake ever. There is a great deal of frustration when people choose to use you as a cypher when you, in fact, disapprove completely on the actions that they are taking, nominally, on your behalf.

So, what I am suggesting is this. That the UK government has policies that are alien to the majority of it’s electorate, but strut the international stage ‘punching above it’s weight’ by ignoring it’s constituency. I can see how that might be just as accurate an analogy to most faith based institutions, including the C of E and the MCB.

‘But I think in these times we have to create that space by defending in one breath the group whose dynamics we challenge in the next.’

Yes indeed. I think some people don’t understand this, and it’s amazing that they can’t take it on board and see the need to internalise this truism as some kind of oppressive imposition on them, rather than telling people wary of something to STFU and stop repressing my crusade. The thing that is remarkable is how this experience resonates against so many of us — look at this thread, Jewish, Asian and Black people have described this minority dynamic from their own perspective.

He supports the IJVs because he hasn’t got a fucking clue. The thick cunt.

Wow – and I thought some Indians who dissed Hundal were harsh.

Got it in one.

The terms of any discussion tends to be negotiated as we go along. But that is not always good enough, as the danger is you make an argument for respecting a group in one context and it is ripped out and displayed as giving reasons why a group should be disrespected by someone else. Then you are having your own words used against you unfairly.

So I want to be aware of the games people are playing, to avoid being manipulated. But on the other hand I want to believe it is possible to raise the game to one where I can express my view honestly and it being taken as it is, without being suspected of ulterior motives which might be difficult to disprove.

The reality is we don’t get what we want. People will often misuse other people’s speech where it suits their purposes. So at some point it makes sense to feel responsible for how your speech is misused, if there is something you can do about it (hedging what you say, avoiding emotive terms) and then you will sound like your waffling anyway and no-one will listen.

Given these dynamics, it’s all down to how fearful we are and what our consciences can put up with. It is probably a good thing that we all have different levels of fear and diferent judgments, so that at least someone breaks the silence sometimes. We should focus our indignation at people who use try to use their arguments to spread hatred.

Sunny’s point seems to me to be that by being less fearful we can create a new dynamic. Space for constructive criticism. But I think in these times we have to create that space by defending in one breath the group whose dynamics we challenge in the next.

there’s a lot of ‘protectiveness’ of group identity around in the world isn’t there?

don’t be a twat, kulvinder. it’s a perfectly valid question. what entitles someone to an ethno-religious identity? can one alienate oneself from that? if someone is born into a jewish family, does that make them jewish if all they ever do is disassociate themselves from it in every possible way? obviously the religious answer is that if they fit the religious criteria, this cannot be changed. but we certainly recognise the concept of apostasy and “separating oneself from the community” and these are serious issues, however much you wish to preen and posture.

b’shalom

bananabrain

I suspect israel does generate anti-semitism towards jewish people, and I don’t need to see the evidence for it. It’s the same as numbers of attacks increasing on Muslims since Al-Q – I guess people mis-leadingly make others gulty by association.

This takes me back to Sunny’s original entry. It’s not wrong to crititisise from the inside – a good thing. Stuart Hall , looking at black deviancy in the 1970s asked why Black british people felt responsible for every single Black british criminal that got picked up by the police and reported on the national news. The answer given was that as a minority we feel the burden of representation – those arguments were based on rigirous analysis of media coverage on criminality and representation in the UK – some of the best sociology on communications this country has produced in fact.

My reason for citing Hall is this. Timing is everything. When minorities are under pressure – and when media paints them to be villains – there is a danger that all images get narrowed to justify and reduce the different experience of us as a community. That’s the danger, and when there is criticism form the inside, this adds salt to the wound.

It’s a bit like the Brits and US wanted to justify going into Iraq and so they kept coming up with iraqi people to do their bidding on TV as though if it’s an Irawi speaking from the inside, welcoming US soldiers, this is OK. So yes, criticism is easily manipulated to achieve wrong ends – and we should sometimes be responsible about exercising our power to criticise – because it puts minoirty groups under danger to majority verbal and physical abuse. I wouldn’t want to add to that.

For this reason in the decade leading up the invasion of Afghanistan, I didn’t join in the large scale liberal western view that women in Afghanistan were unfree and needed saving from evil Taliban. The Taliban may/not be evil but I certainly didn’t want to be a part of the western population that suddenly became concerned with the plight of Afghan women and then this widepsread concern was used as moral fodder to justify US attacks on that country. I could see it ten years before- ah, yes, let’s vilify the country long enough until it’s one big stereotype in our imagination adn we can sweep in there and ‘save’ the women. Hmm.

you might well, as might i, be bound to ask what exactly it is that made him sikh in the first place.

I think we’ll just agree to disagree; though for what its worth whenever someone asks me that i mock them until they make a relevant argument.

just in the interests of evenhandedness, this isn’t just a problem with lefties – it’s also a problem from the anti-zionist ultra-orthodox. check out “neturei karta” and “jews against zionism” (the same people; i won’t link to them) whose recent photo-ops at the holocaust denial conference in tehran were extensively reported in the arab press as evidence that “the real jews are the good ones who hate israel”. in my other role as judaism board moderator on the UK’s largest comparative religion forum, these guys are constantly referenced by members of the islamic peanut gallery as proof that zionism is a crime, because, look, these guys think so too and they’re jewish – look at their beards and black hats.

feh.

b’shalom

bananabrain

Yup. There’s a particular type of moron out there who will see the IJV as confirmation of our intrinsic evil as the good ones can’t stand the rest of us.

And this has been known to happen specifically over the IJV ? I suspect that most of the morons you refer to haven’t even heard of it.

like i said above, i support religious biodiversity. however, if the sole manifestation of someone’s claim to jewish identity is public criticism of israel, it would probably be as convincing as me claiming to be an ethiopian based on the fact that one of my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmothers was (which she was) – there comes a point where a label stretches credibility to breaking point. it is what i refer to as the “bacon bagel”. a bagel is a quintessentially jewish food item. putting bacon in it makes it about as far from that as possible. i suppose the sikh equivalent of this would be someone who considered all amritdharis to be deranged fundamentalists, would be embarrassed to even wear a bracelet in public (let alone a turban or a beard) never went near a gurdwara, lived somewhere like hampstead (surprise!) with a non-sikh partner and constantly wrote letters to the guardian (surprise!) about how reginald dyer was a much maligned champion of progressive values and how guru nanak was a sectarian militant and how everyone in the punjab is a corrupt pendu who beats his wife – and, although he himself is an atheist and thinks sikhism is a backward, provincial militant sect, his criticisms of sikhism come only from his concern as a sikh.

you might well, as might i, be bound to ask what exactly it is that made him sikh in the first place. it kind of reminds me of all those americans who go on about being irish when the closest they’ve ever got to it is standing next to someone at a pub who is holding a pint of guinness.

b’shalom

bananabrain

are the sort of people who would never get attacked in the street for being jewish, because they don’t dress like it, they don’t go to jewish places, they don’t mix with jewish people, they don’t do jewish things. their jewishness is merely an ethnic identity without cultural or religious input – the definition of ethnic anti-semites like the nazis…

…but you can’t expect the IJV luvvies to appreciate a religious insight like that, or its implications, because they’re all too focused on their post-enlightenment individualism.

Fair enough. Though i am going to unashamedly own up to the fact that were you a sikh or i a jew, we would have ‘issues’ with each others identity. Based on your description alone, i am more like them than you.

But then i suppose it takes all sorts… :)

“with the outbreak of the Second Palestinian Intifada in September 2000, most agencies monitoring antisemitism throughout Europe and beyond, including the EUMC, have acknowledged a rise in antisemitic incidents. Often these peak at times when there is a particular outbreak of violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or somewhere else in the Middle East… This trend is reflected in Britain.”

The Report can be found at http://thepcaa.org/Report.pdf.

Antisemitic incidents happen because the people who perpetrate them hate Jews. I agree with Sunny that criticism of Israel cannot be stifled because there are people who use it as an excuse to perpetrate violence on the Jewish community here – but I don’t like it when people ignore the causal link between them, because it does exist and it’s the Jews in this country – who do not vote in Israeli elections, have no say in Israeli foreign policy and in many cases have never even been to Israel – who are on the sharp end of it.