"I guess that includes me. Guess what Isi: I’m Jewish. I’m married to a non-Jew. I eat fish without fins or scales. I have goyische friends. But I’m Jewish. My momma’s Jewish. I read books. I’m proud to be a Jew. And your narrowminded ethnocentrism is taking the community off the cliff."
Mondoweiss
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While you're at it check V's very interesting response to a Zioninst's comment on this article.
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This is supposed to be the kosher form of “either you are for us or against us,” that is how it should ring in your ears. Actually I appreciate the help from Isi, because I am preparing a call in the opposite direction and he is making it easier. What he does not know is that many are right in the middle of his group(s) of the faithful, and if it is forced to the floor he can look forward to another unceremonious exodus (in reality).
ReplyDelete<span>One comment on the article on Mondo'swondering jew</span> <span>October 7, 2009 at 8:13 pm</span>
ReplyDeleteFirst, Mister Liebler’s column is more toxic than bull in a china shop, so let me try to avoid most of his specifics and attempt to deal with the issue at large.
Any position (on the issues at hand) espoused by Jew, nonJew or Palestinian, should meet a minimal requirement of logic, realism and empathy towards Jews, Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs, Americans and all humans. But the question we are dealing with, the question raised by Mister Liebler is precisely, “Is it good for the Jews?”
Mister Weiss feels that current Israeli policy is leading Israel and its Jewish supporters in the United States over the cliff. Mister Liebler feels that a policy of BDS is prima facie bad for Israel.
But this major disagreement is complicated when Mister Liebler labels many of those Jews who espouse antiZionist ideas as nonJewish Jews. Certainly Jews who advocate values of justice and peace can find Biblical and traditional justification for their positions. But the question I feel that Mister Liebler is justified in raising is the question of Jewish continuity. It is natural for a nation as small as the Jewish people (who have yet to recover demographically from the physical onslaught of WWII) to wonder and worry about continuity. Certainly in this age of secularism and modernism a nation associated with a rather specific belief in a specific religion and god must worry about its survival. Zionism is one attempt to accept secularism and espouse a strategy for survival. Those who advocate antiZionism certainly can be asked to offer an alternate survival strategy. Intermarriage and assimilationism are natural processes. Yet they are not strategies for survival. Quite the opposite.
(Reading Kafka and Hannah Arendt are intellectual and Jewish plusses. Yet they within themselves are not a strategy for survival.)
<span><span>One comment on the article on Mondo's</span></span>
ReplyDelete<span><span>wondering jew</span> <span>October 7, 2009 at 8:13 pm</span>
First, Mister Liebler’s column is more toxic than bull in a china shop, so let me try to avoid most of his specifics and attempt to deal with the issue at large.
Any position (on the issues at hand) espoused by Jew, nonJew or Palestinian, should meet a minimal requirement of logic, realism and empathy towards Jews, Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs, Americans and all humans. But the question we are dealing with, the question raised by Mister Liebler is precisely, “Is it good for the Jews?”
Mister Weiss feels that current Israeli policy is leading Israel and its Jewish supporters in the United States over the cliff. Mister Liebler feels that a policy of BDS is prima facie bad for Israel.
But this major disagreement is complicated when Mister Liebler labels many of those Jews who espouse antiZionist ideas as nonJewish Jews. Certainly Jews who advocate values of justice and peace can find Biblical and traditional justification for their positions. But the question I feel that Mister Liebler is justified in raising is the question of Jewish continuity. It is natural for a nation as small as the Jewish people (who have yet to recover demographically from the physical onslaught of WWII) to wonder and worry about continuity. Certainly in this age of secularism and modernism a nation associated with a rather specific belief in a specific religion and god must worry about its survival. Zionism is one attempt to accept secularism and espouse a strategy for survival. Those who advocate antiZionism certainly can be asked to offer an alternate survival strategy. Intermarriage and assimilationism are natural processes. Yet they are not strategies for survival. Quite the opposite.
(Reading Kafka and Hannah Arendt are intellectual and Jewish plusses. Yet they within themselves are not a strategy for survival.)</span>
V's reply:
ReplyDelete“But the question we are dealing with, the question raised by Mister Liebler is precisely, “Is it good for the Jews?””
Sadly Mr. Liebler’s argument, based upon the above premise is really the only “philosophy” that can truly be can seen as especially adopted by America, Pragmatism. The gross extension of pragmatism can create terrible situations when taken to the extreme, as in the case of Israel or any other would be nation (as in America’s beginning, it was necessary for the young nation to expand on the continent in order to be influential – therefore the indigenous population was a target of genocide – but it was “good” for what was to be America). Ergo, are there Palestinians on that piece of property – it is good for the Zionists to have land – therefore we either cleanse them by expulsion or murder. Does the nation need water? The Palestinians sit on land which has a major body of water beneath the soil (or above it), repeat of the same atrocity regarding the land. This could go on indefinitely.
Bertrand Russell on pragmatism – “Pragmatism, in some of its forms, is a power-philosophy. For pragmatism, a belief is ‘true’ if its consequences are pleasant. Now human beings can make the consequences of a belief pleasant or unpleasant. Belief in the moral superiority of a dictator has pleasanter consequences than disbelief, if you live under his government. Wherever there is effective persecution, the official creed is ‘true’ in the pragmatist sense. The pragmatist philosophy, therefore, gives to those in power a metaphysical omnipotence which a more pedestrian philosophy would deny to them. I do not suggest that most pragmatists admit the consequences of their philosophy; I say only that they are consequences, and that the pragmatist’s attack on the common view of truth is an outcome of love of power, though perhaps more of power over inanimate nature than of power over human beings. ”
I would say in Israel’s case it is “power over human beings,” which is the expression of the love of power, over the Palestinians in such a pedestrian manner that it boggles the imagination. One may convince themselves of any necessity nor care about the consequences to other human beings, for their own “highest good.”
ReplyDeleteSimilar to what Durkheim spoke of when he taled about the utilitarian nature of pragmatism –
“Seeking the useful is following nature, not mastering it or taming it. There is no place here for the moral constraint implied in the idea of obligation. Pragmatism indeed cannot entail a hierarchy of values, since everything in it is placed on the same level. The true and the good are both on our level, that of the useful, and no effort is needed to lift ourselves to it. For James, the truth is what is ‘expedient’, and it is because it is advantageous that it is good and has value. Clearly this means that truth has its demands, its loyalties, and can give rise to enthusiasm, but at the level of the useful, this enthusiasm is only related to what is capable of pleasing us, that which is in conformity with our interests.
Nor is it possible to see how pragmatists could explain the necessitating character of truth. Pragmatists believe that it is we who construct both the world and the representations which express it. We ‘make’ truth in conformity with our needs…”
What you espouse WJ is what can be linked to every atrocity of man against man since the beginning of time.
Contin.
ReplyDelete<span>I would say in Israel’s case it is “power over human beings,” which is the expression of the love of power, over the Palestinians in such a pedestrian manner that it boggles the imagination. One may convince themselves of any necessity nor care about the consequences to other human beings, for their own “highest good.”
Similar to what Durkheim spoke of when he taled about the utilitarian nature of pragmatism –
“Seeking the useful is following nature, not mastering it or taming it. There is no place here for the moral constraint implied in the idea of obligation. Pragmatism indeed cannot entail a hierarchy of values, since everything in it is placed on the same level. The true and the good are both on our level, that of the useful, and no effort is needed to lift ourselves to it. For James, the truth is what is ‘expedient’, and it is because it is advantageous that it is good and has value. Clearly this means that truth has its demands, its loyalties, and can give rise to enthusiasm, but at the level of the useful, this enthusiasm is only related to what is capable of pleasing us, that which is in conformity with our interests.
Nor is it possible to see how pragmatists could explain the necessitating character of truth. Pragmatists believe that it is we who construct both the world and the representations which express it. We ‘make’ truth in conformity with our needs…”
What you espouse WJ is what can be linked to every atrocity of man against man since the beginning of time.</span>
v's been blogging around. my heart is broken. ;)
ReplyDeleteI like playing around :) in more ways than one
ReplyDelete