Jack & Jill Politics

[Preface: I'm a white Jewish lurker on your blog who comments anonymously (and mention that I am white and Jewish) from time to time. I debated posting this anonymously as well, but I decided that it was time to come out and put my name on my post. That's how infuriated I am by your post].

To be abundantly clear: yes, I think race plays a huge part in the fact that Hagee is accepted while Farrakhan is vilified. But that does not mean that Farrakhan should not be vilified. You are dead wrong when you say that Farrakhan has never said anything worse than what Hagee said.

Two wrongs doesn’t make a right. Hagee is a bigot. Farrakhan is a bigot. Like it or not, Farrakhan is. He also preaches a highly unorthodox version of Islam that gives credence to the Islamophobes (Allah did not speak to anyone in the 20th century; Islam does not advocate racial segregation). Farrakhan, and the rest of the Nation perverts Islam, just like Pastor Hagee perverts Christianity with his opinions on natural disasters. Please don’t discount Farrakhan’s racism and hatred simply because there is a homophobic hater on the Republican side (rephrase that…many homophobic haters on the Republican side).

As a Jew, I am deeply offended by what Farrakhan has repeatedly said about me (yes, talking about all Jews, means you are talking about each and every Jew). I’m not one to find anti-Semitism under every rock, and I don’t particularly like the ADL, but they have collected a nice batch of Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism: http://www.adl.org/special_reports/farrakhan_own_words2/on_jews.asp

And moreover, what Pastor Hagee has said on Jewish suffering is not out of line with traditional Jewish teaching. The destruction of the two temples (first by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, and again in 70 CE by the Romans) and the resulting exiles were because Jews had lost their way and had disobeyed God.

What Pastor Hagee said about Jewish suffering pales in comparison to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef (who is the former Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Israel, i.e. the Chief Rabbi of Israel for Spanish/Dutch-descended/Middle Eastern Jews who follow the Spanish liturgy; it’s complicated — it’s also important to note that the overwhelming majority of Jewish victims of the Holocuast were Ashkenazi (i.e. of the German liturgy), not Sephardi) who said in 2000: “[T]he 6 million Holocaust victims were reincarnations of the souls of sinners, people who transgressed and did all sorts of things that should not be done. They had been reincarnated in order to atone.” I strongly disagree with this opinion, denounce it and condemn it (I’m not sure which is stronger. Senator Clinton?). I don’t like what Yosef said. Rabbi Yosef’s extreme views do underscore something that has continuously underpinned Jewish thought: rationalizing why very, very bad, unthinkable things happen to good people. How can you possibly explain why 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis (not to mention the 4 million non-Jews killed in the camps, and the tens of millions killed in fighting during the War)? How can you explain the Spanish Inquisition? How can you explain the Expulsion? How can you explain the destruction of the two temples? How do you explain the pogroms? How do you explain Auschwitz? How can you explain that if your whole understanding of the world is of an omnipotent God who protects the righteous and the innocent? In Yosef’s framework, it is because we (the Jews) messed up. (You now may begin to see why Jews are stereotyped as being self-loathing and neurotic; and why many of us actually are self-loathing or neurotic to some degree). In this context, Pastor Hagee’s opinions on Jews, are (sadly) very much in line with traditional Jewish teaching. Your outcry about Hagee raises the issue of privilege: who may speak about a particular issue? Is this quote only an outrage because a nutjob Christian espoused them?

Now, back to Farrakhan. Contrast Hagee/Yosef’s opinions on Jewish suffering, which vacillate somewhere between Jewish self-loathing and race/religion-baiting, with Farrakhan’s statements:
“Farrakhan: “Is the Federal Reserve owned by the government?”
Audience: “No.”
Farrakhan: “Who owns the federal reserve?”
Audience: “Jews.”
Farrakhan: “The same year they set up the IRS, they set up the FBI. And the same year they set up the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith… It could be a coincidence… [I want] to see black intellectuals free… I want to see them not controlled by members of the Jewish community.”"

OR

“You say I hate Jews. I don’t hate the Jewish people, I never have. But there [are] some things I don’t like. ‘What is it you don’t like, Farrakhan?’ I don’t like the way you leech on us. See a leech is somebody that sucks your blood, takes from you and don’t give you a damn thing. See, I don’t like that kind of arrangement. You become our manager, you become our agent. Every one of us that got talent, we can’t make it because you opened the door, and when you opened the door you get and we end up dead with nothing, owing the IRS.”

OR

“Do you know some of these satanic Jews have taken over BET?… Everything that we built, they have. The mind of Satan now is running the record industry, movie industry and television. And they make us look like we’re the murders; we look like we’re the gangsters, but we’re punk stuff.”

I’m sorry, but that’s the epitome of modern anti-Semitism, the mindset that gives rise to the mass murder of Jews. This is the idea that Jews control the world, that we are the purveyors of global capitalism and (ironically, were it not justifications for hate groups) simultaneously of global Bolshevism. Modern anti-Semitism differs from religious hatred. Hitler didn’t hate Jews because they didn’t worship Jesus or because they had their Sabbath on a Saturday. Hitler hated us because he thought we controlled the world. Farrakhan hates us because he thinks we control the world, and specifically that we target the black world.

Honestly, I’d really come to appreciate the debate and analysis on this blog, but your post is either extremely ignorant or extremely repulsive. I hope that you take the time to educate yourself about Farrakhan. Read Mein Kampf, then read Farrakhan, then read about the origins of modern anti-Semitism (not the hatred of Jews on religious grounds)…and then come back and tell me that Pastor Hagee is honestly the bigger anti-Semite, in the way that the word is meant to be used (it was coined in the 19th century to show that hating Jews for non-religious reasons was okay, and that hating Jews for religious reasons was primitive. It made hatred a science).

To be clear, I don’t like Pastor Hagee, he is a bigot and he is a homophobe. I condemn, I denounce. He uses Jews and Israel to further his own eschatological fantasies which border on religious hatred (see Gershom Gorenberg’s End of Days). But that one quote that you pull, is not worse than what Farrakhan has said (and it definitely ain’t worse than what Ovadia Yosef has said). I pity you if you honestly believe that, “Nothing Farrakhan has said or done is more vile than this.”

Let’s please not try to say that one wrong is worse than another. They are both wrong, and they are both despicable. Let us condemn all wrongs, and not implicitly condone Farrakhan, because it’s not (in your opinion) as bad as what a white man said. It’s all wrong.

Sorry for writing an essay. Have a nice day.

You can control whether or not you accept their endorsement and appear with them in public. Guess which candidate did both?

Yid,

I know, intimately the kind of shit Farrakhan has said. I was one of the only kids in my junior high school that WASN’T at the Million Man March, and when I told my teacher I thought Farrakhan was a racist because I am Jewish, I was told I was the racist because I didn’t like Farrakhan.

My mother told me growing up that Farrakhan was responsible for killing Malcolm X.

I’m not excusing anything Farrakhan has said. I just don’t think anything anyone could possibly say is worse than “the Jews deserved to be killed in the Holocaust.” I’ve personally been in violent confrontations over such statements. The above statements made by Farrakhan can be rationally disproven. I know because I went to school with NOI kids who I argued with constantly, and perhaps only took me seriously because by being both I was living proof of Farrakhan’s lies.

There is no way to argue with someone who said God let the Holocaust happen to punish the Jews, which is what makes it so vile.

michelle,

I agree. It’s a subtle form of racism/anti-Semitism. Playing minorities against one another to consolidate your own power. Sadly it has worked to a large degree.

dnA,

I appreciate your response, and I agree with you that it is abhorrent when people say that God let the Holocaust happen to punish the Jews for their perceived religious crimes. However, I again ask you to reconcile your argument that this constitutes modern, racial anti-Semitism with the fact that rabbis themselves have historically made the same argument that Pastor Hagee has as regards to the Holocaust and other traumatic events in Jewish history:

“The Temple was supposed to last forever; this depended, however, on the Jews’ adherence to the Torah and its mitzvot (Divine commandments). At first, the Jews kept the Torah and steadfastly retained their faith, enjoying peace, prosperity and a direct connection to G-d through the Temple. However, after 300 years the Jews began to stray from the Torah and leave the path of their fathers. G-d sent prophets repeatedly to admonish them, but the Jews refused to change their ways, choosing instead to deride these prophets as false messengers come to discourage them with predictions of destruction…Thus G-d punished His people for deserting Him and His laws. All this had been predicted in the Torah, and it truly came to pass with all the horror of which Moses had warned. ” Does that constitute anti-Semitism? The destruction of the First Temple resulted in the slavery of portions of the Jews (or Judeans? When did Judaism truly become Judaism?). The above quote is from Chabad. Although it sounds like it could come from Pastor Hagee. Methinks this is a question of who has the right to say what in today’s America, i.e. a question of privilege.

Hints of Holocaust self-blame are found even amongst some of the most progressive 20th Century rabbis, like Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, albeit from a very different perspective from Chabad, who lamented as follows in 1948: “When we were blinded by the light of European civilization, we could not appreciate the value of the small fire of our eternal light. In the spiritual confusion of the last hundred years, many of us overlooked the incomparable beauty of our old, poor home. We compared our fathers and grandfathers, our teachers and rabbis, with Russian or German intellectuals. We preached in the name of the twentieth century, compared Berdichev to Paris, Ger with Heidelberg. Dazzled by big city street lamps we lost our inner vision. The luminous visions that for so many generations shone in the little candles were extinguished for many of us. Now, trampled and bloodied in the blinding lamps of civilization and evil – we sense the importance of our small candles which our mothers so piously blessed.” Is Dr. Heschel, the Rabbi who marched arm-in-arm with Dr. King, really suggesting that Jewish desire to assimilate is the reason for the Holocaust. Had only we held onto Jewish identity we would not have been fooled into believing that Europeans were not capable of such a harm? Jewish self-blame even here. Is it anti-Semitism?

Then there is the Zionist (and later Israeli) ambivalence/outright disdain for Holocaust survivors. Israeli policy, up until the trial of Adolf Eichmann, was basically to blame the Holocaust victims for not seeing the “true way” and emigrating to British Palestine, thereby saving their own lives (the “Why did you go like sheep to the slaughter” argument). I recommend Tom Segev’s excellent The Seventh Million on this topic. The book recounts this gem from David Ben-Gurion: “We were on the brink of extermination.” Ben-Gurion was referring to the yishuv (the Jewish community in British Palestine) even though he had been asked about the Holocaust. Moments later he responded to a third question about the Holocaust with “What is there to understand? They died, that’s it.” Is Ben-Gurion’s quote “better” than Pastor Hagee. Ben-Gurion does not attempt to blame Jewish indifference to Jewish law as the reason for the Holocaust (curiously, the creation of a Jewish state in the Holy Land is thought to be prohibited in Jewish law because it requires the coming of the Messiah first). Rather Ben-Gurion just doesn’t even care. Should Pastor Hagee have made such a remark, we would have been all over him for that too.

Then again there are anti-Semitic Zionists, and anti-Zionist Jews. So maybe an anti-Semitic rabbi like Ovadia Yosef isn’t so hard to fathom? Put another way, if Ovadia Yosef were an American Rabbi who endorsed John McCain, would you still title this article anti-Semites for McCain?

And as to why no one is holding Hagee’s feet to the fire…the Republican party is made up more and more of these staunch evangelicals. The GOP has made a deal with the devil. If he renounces Hagee, McCain loses the election in my opinion. The evangelicals stay home. If Obama does not renounce Farrakhan though, he risks losing not just the Jewish vote, but larger swaths of the upper-class educated vote who don’t particularly like Clinton, but don’t like Farrakhan’s hate much either. What is the proportion of the Democratic party who are followers of Farrakhan compared to the proportion of the GOP who follow Hagee and other like-minded evangelical pastors who use Jews for their own religious purposes (namely, the construction of the Third Temple). McCain simply can’t afford to renounce Hagee. No Republican can.

Regarding your anecdote with the teacher, I’ve always wondered what Farrakhan thought about Black American Jews, the Beta Israel and the Ugandan Jews of Mbale. If your teacher is any indication, it seems not much.

But then again, maybe we should ask Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John McCain why they are all taking support from Lutherans? Yes, I said Lutherans. Martin Luther penned “On the Jews and their Lies.” Luther makes Farrakhan look like Gandhi. I mean, damn, the book makes the Jew-baiting in Mein Kampf blush. Take a look, if you got a strong stomach: http://www.humanitas-international.org/showcase/chronography/documents/luther-jews.htm Or have any of them taken donations from the Ford Motor Company? http://books.google.com/books?id=cNsfsqyxDl8C&dq=henry+ford+the+international+jew&pg=PP1&ots=DMCEW05r04&sig=izqePC-5oak58QIx4FcUZ2eF2g8&hl=en&prev=http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=henry+ford+the+international+jew&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title&cad=one-book-with-thumbnail

I would like to be able to agree that in Obama and McCain we have the best chance to leave the “politics of personal destruction” behind. I would really hate to see this election dominated by racism and anti-semitism.

I do not ascribe to the notion that the GOP is racist anymore than the Democrat party is anti-semitic. There are racists and anti-semites in the US, so I am racist and anti-semitic because I am American?

While the candidates spend their days denouncing, rejecting we are still at war, still need education reform, still need an effective immigration policy…that’s what I care about.

Or should we start keeping score.

Racists for Obama=1
Racist for McCain=1

So stupid.