Anti-Semitism: Harbinger of Political and Social Decline

 I recently completed a research paper entitled Anti-Semitism: Harbinger of Political and Social Decline. I uploaded the complete paper to www.academia.edu with this abstract:

This article is an analysis of Jew hatred (anti-Semitism) and its debilitating impact on society and governance. It first looks at religious Jew hatred, showing how Muslim Jew hatred is the underlying cause of the Arab-Israel conflict, and how it is also a measure of the dysfunctionality of Arab governments. The paper then turns to ideological-leftist Jew hatred, and the psychological processes that allow bigotry to get embedded into politics. The paper concludes with a brief review of political parties in Europe that are promoting Jew hatred and the fragility of those countries where Jew hatred is most prevalent.

Here are the opening paragraphs:
I. Introduction

For those who are paying even modest attention, it is clear that anti-Semitism, conspiracy theories about Jews, and anti-Zionist hatred of Israel, the "Jew of nations," has been on the rise for two decades.

However, such a general statement provides an unfocused starting place for analysis. In this essay I will look at the problem more closely, teasing apart its three primary strands:
1. religious anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism
2. political/ideological anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism
3. nationalistic anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism
I will begin this analysis with religion, the most historically prevalent form of Jew hatred, and for the sake of brevity and honesty, from here on out I will dispense with euphemisms, and refer to anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism as Jew hatred.


II. Religious Jew Hatred

Religious Jew hatred must be differentiated into its Muslim and Christian forms. Muslim Jew hatred appears to be no worse today than it has been for many decades, certainly since 1948, and probably since 1900 in conjunction with the rise of Zionism. However, saying it is no worse today than it has been for a century is really saying that Islamic Jew hatred is 1. state-promoted; 2. inculcated in the home, school systems, and news and social media; 3. virtually unrestrained; and 4. greatly influenced by Nazi ideology. The ADL’s 2014 study of world anti-Semitism (1), and current events documented on MEMRI’s website(2) verifies the extent and viciousness of this hatred, its profound disconnect from historical evidence, and the comprehensive lack of honesty that dominates opinions across the Muslim world.

(1.) Executive Summary: http://global100.adl.org/public/ADL-Global-100-Executive-Summary.pdf;
    Full report: http://global100.adl.org/
(2.) MEMRI’S home page: http://www.memri.org/middle-east-media-research-institute.html;
MEMRITV: http://www.memritv.org/; MEMRI media archives: http://www.memri.org/media-archives.html

The consequences are far reaching and highly disturbing. This is surely the underlying cause behind the Arab (and Muslim) refusal to make peace with Israel. Ironically, many people get this backwards. Many people think Arab and Muslim Jew hatred is an effect of conflict with Israel. In fact, it pre-existed and generated those conflicts. The Arabs 1. refused to accept Jewish immigration to Palestine before 1948; 2. refused to accept Israel’s right to exist in 1948; and 3. refused to negotiate with Israel after the ‘48, ‘56, ‘67, and ‘73 wars, and with the exception of Egypt and Jordan (who have made a frigid peace with Israel) at no other time have Arabs come forward and simply accepted Israel’s right to exist. The Palestinian conflict with Israel is a direct result of this refusal to tolerate the existence of a Jewish nation in the Middle East.

Yet Israel’s existence emerged at the same time and as a result of the same historic events that created every other Middle Eastern nation. Every Middle Eastern country was created in the aftermath of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, an empire that had colonized this region for over 500 years. And not a single nation created by European powers in the aftermath of the Ottoman collapse had ever existed at any time in history, with the exception of Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, and Yemen. Therefore if Arabs question Israel’s right to exist, they need first question their own nation’s right to exist! Of course, that kind of logic is never applied because Jew hatred is emotional, not logical in its foundations.

The depth and breadth of the problem mitigates against the possibility of any meaningful and enduring Israeli-Arab peace any time in the foreseeable future. So long as the vast majority of Arabs hate Jews and Israel, any government that makes peace with Israel will be implementing a policy that will undermine its stability. Sisi’s government in Egypt is particularly vulnerable at this time, as it warms to Israel while struggling economically.

But this widespread, overt, and unashamed Jew hatred in the Muslim world does not only affect Arab-Israeli peace efforts. Indeed, that is only the tip of the iceberg. The existence of widespread Jew hatred in society reflects a society that is socially, politically, economically, and morally fractured and dysfunctional. Where Jew hatred is overt and widespread, general hatred, discrimination, and social fracturing are equally overt and widespread. And a society torn by these fractures will surely be dysfunctional.

Look at any Arab nation and you will see the result of long-term, unaddressed, and unmitigated Jew hatred. Algeria, Libya, Egypt, Somalia, Mali, Sudan, Eritrea, Lebanon, the Palestinians, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, and Yemen are all in social and political free-fall. Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, though mostly non-Arab, are all 90%+ majority Muslim, and are all either torn to pieces in social and political conflict, or dominated by aggressive dictatorships that hold the pieces together with a ruthless police state (as did Syria, Iraq, and Libya for many decades).

ISIS: Rooted in Islam

ISIS: Rooted in Islam
Why Obama and most liberals fundamentally misunderstand Islam and ISIS


This essay will cover the following points:
1.   Islam and Enlightenment: Inherent Conflict
2.   Islam and the World: Shared Values
3.   A Review of Muslim-Majority nations and their Political-Social Center-points
4.   Selected Infographics


A Brief Introduction


The issue of terrorism and ISIS, a terrorist state, and their relationship to Islam is a fraught subject that walks through the minefields of bigotry and xenophobia on one side, and self-destructive ineptitude and delusion on the other. Anyone who walks this field will step on mines and antagonize people. I write this article to inspire discussion and a fuller understanding of the issues. Therefore, I welcome your amplifications and expansions of my topics and points, and your critiques. However, I am only interested in data-driven analysis. This article attempts to compile verifiable and reliable data. Too many of these discussions, including Obama's speech of 12/6/15, are nothing but fluff, emotion, and sermonizing, urging us to either play-nice with our friends (liberals) or punish those bad guys (conservatives).


This article first outlines three pillars of Islam that are in conflict with the Enlightenment, pillars that both Muslim and non-Muslim sources agree are foundational. Then I look at some shared values that will tend to ameliorate conflict, and which may eventually lead towards greater understanding and respect. Finally, I look at a wide range of Muslim-majority countries to assess the current state of Islamic ideology as reflected in political and social values.


A note on terminology:
First, I use the acronym ISIS, although ISIL is a valid alternative. Second, I talk about Islamist thought, Islamism, and Islamic fascism. They are all the same thing to me. Some may object to my use of "fascism," as this term is generally used to describe non-religious dictatorships and ideologies. However, Islam, unlike other major religious ideologies, is very forthright in integrating the political into the religious sphere. Therefore, I believe "Islamic fascism" can stand as a term that means "repressive, intolerant, fundamentalist Islamic ideologies applied to politics and social organization." I am NOT making the argument that Islamic governments are inherently fascist. Far from it. Islam has many faces, but like any political entity, it can incline to fascism. In this era, that inclination has become common, and therefore, many people, lacking historical perspective, imagine Islamic fascism to be normative.


1. Islam and Enlightenment: Inherent Conflict


When I say "Enlightenment" I am referring to the ideas of democracy, universal equality of individuals, and the endorsement of multi-cultural values without favoritism towards a specific ethnicity. As is only too obvious, these principles are incompletely realized even in the most "enlightened" communities and societies.


The Enlightenment, as it emerged in C18, posed a direct challenge to Christianity, Judaism, and Western monarchies, and led to a long history of violence and vitriol. While the West continues to struggle to implement full and well-functioning versions of enlightenment-inspired governments and social institutions, most regions of Islam are only now, for the first time, facing the confrontation with these principles. As we look across the Islamic world we can see it begin to struggle with the Enlightenment just as Christianity, Judaism, and Western monarchies did over the period 1792-1945.


Consider this excerpt from the Middle East Values Survey of 2013:
In the second half of the twentieth century, a dominant trend among the indigenous intellectual leaders portrayed an image of the West that was militarily aggressive, economically exploitative, and culturally decadent. They forewarned their audience against Western cultural invasion and conspiracies against Muslims. Such perceptions have gained considerable traction in the seven countries [in this study], as 85% of Egyptians, 80% of Iraqis, 64% of Lebanese, 30% of Pakistanis, 83% of Saudis, 54% of Tunisians, and 83% of Turks consider Western cultural invasion to be a very important or important problem. More liberal countries like Lebanon and Tunisia tend to be less concerned with Western culture.


This is why I don't see ISIS as a reaction to American policy in Iraq, western economic interests in the Middle East, and/or British and French colonialism. Its roots are much deeper and reflect the massive turmoil generated by Enlightenment principles in conflict with deeply entrenched and calcified medieval Islamic ideologies and models of government based on Islam. While ISIS is also a product of long standing internal Islamic conflicts, dysfunctional economies, and the power vacuums created by the meltdown or dismantling of inveterately dysfunctional governments, these problems simply add complexity to the underlying trajectory that has brought us worldwide terrorism, numerous implementations of Islamic fascism, and ISIS. That underlying trajectory is a product of the clash of Islam with the Enlightenment.


This conflict centers around three anti-Enlightenment pillars in Islam. Those pillars are:
1.   Dar al Islam and Dar al Harb
2.   Jihad
3.   Dhimma


Any understanding of Islam and its trajectories in world politics, including ISIS, requires a careful appraisal of these three pillars. When I say "pillars of Islam" I am referring to concepts that are embraced by the vast majority of religious Muslims in the world today. They are as essential to defining Islam as Messiah and Trinity are to Christianity.


Dar al Islam means "region of peace." Dar al Harb means "region of war." While there can be allegorical and metaphorical interpretations of these terms by liberal and mystical-minded Muslims, in main-stream Islam the terms are understood in a very literal sense. Dar al Islam is the place where Islam predominates. The rest of the world is the Dar al Harb, the region of war, were Islam does not yet predominate. [To verify this for yourself, you might begin at en.islamway.net, Dar Al-Islam And Dar Al-Harb: Its Definition and Significance.]


This is classic, medieval supersessionist thinking, identical to Christian supersessionism. It is the belief that Islam is the only true and correct understanding of God, and that Islam will, and must, prevail over all other religions. This view directly conflicts with the Enlightenment ideas of free-choice and religious relativity. [See the infographics at the end of this article, especially the two about tolerance for teaching other religions to children and tolerance for criticizing religious leaders.]


Jihad is probably the only one of the three pillars that is widely known outside of Islam. Like Dar al Islam, it can be interpreted as an allegorical or spiritual striving with self or with evil tendencies, but most Muslims in Muslim-majority countries understand this term literally. [Quoting from Wikipedia's article on Jihad: According to orientalist Bernard Lewis, "the overwhelming majority of classical theologians, jurists", and specialists in the hadith "understood the obligation of jihad in a military sense."[15] Javed Ahmad Ghamidi states that there is consensus among Islamic scholars that the concept of jihad will always include armed struggle against wrong doers.[16]] Jihad is the means whereby Dar al Islam will conquer Dar al Harb. Jihad elevates conflict and war to a holy obligation, to be pursued whenever it is politically and militarily feasible and expedient. It is the basis of Islam's "golden age of expansion" from 630-750 CE. You can see a map of this expansion here: Islam's Expansion.


Jihad is, ironically, the foundational principle of Islamic colonialism. I find it odd and hypocritical to hear and read rants by Muslims against Western colonialism, including Said's Orientalism, when, in reality, Islam has been a colonialist ideology from its origins. The principle of jihad, sadly, is a guarantee that conflict between Islam and the rest of the world will persist into any foreseeable future.


Finally, dhimma is the formal legal implementation of Islamic supersessionism over all non-Muslim peoples in the Dar al Islam. It is, quite literally, Islamic apartheid. While many Muslim scholars try to sugar-coat the dhimma, saying it established "protections" for non-Muslims under Sharia law, we have to ask, why would non-Muslims need to be protected, and from whom? Dhimmis who emerge from dhimmatude have a very different story to tell. From the horror stories of the Yazidis escaping ISIS, to the imprisonment of the founder of Bahai by the Ottomans, to personal and social histories of Jews and Christians who lived in Arab lands [see, for example, Dhimmis and Others: Jews and Christians and the World of Classical Islam, edited by Uri Rubin and David Wasserstein], dhimmatude as seen by its victims, its dhimmis, is oppressive and hateful.


Aspects of the dhimma are integrated into the law in many Muslim countries. They include such laws as: 1. the death penalty for any Muslim who converts, or who espouses atheism, and 2. strict controls, limits, or outright prohibitions on building or repairing churches, synagogues, and other non-Muslim religious buildings. The implementation of the dhimma by ISIS is but a more extreme version of these laws. Indeed, the onerous taxes, beheadings, and massacres by ISIS fit squarely into the long and troubled history of the dhimma in Islam.


A Few Sources:


'The Dhimma's Return', by Mark Durie (excerpted from his book, The Third Choice): http://www.newenglishreview.org/Mark_Durie/The_Dhimma's_Return/,
Bat Ye'or's The Dhimmi, V.S. Naipaul's Among the Believers, or search the internet on such terms as "dhimma" or "Islam and Copts/Yazidis/Bahai/Jews/Hindus/etc"


2. Islam and the World: Shared Values


While there is substantial reason to be pessimistic, Islam shares many core values with all the other major world religions and cultures. Muslim holy texts, beginning with the Koran, provide many and consistent endorsements for the Biblical Prophets, for Kings David and Solomon, for Jesus, and for many Jewish and Christian holy texts. Further, the ethical foundations of Islam are virtually identical with every other world religion. The primacy of compassion, hospitality, generosity, and peace provide a viable counter-weight to jihad and dhimma.


Just as Judaism and Christianity struggled with, and are still developing a common ground with Enlightenment principles [indeed, just today, 12/10/2015 a Vatican commission issued a new document declaring that Catholics should not try to convert Jews] , so we can expect, over the course of the coming 100-200 years, that Islam will find solid common ground with Enlightenment principles, and thus develop compatibility with multi-cultural values. But this will be a slow and non-linear process, just as it has been in the West.


3. A Review of Muslim-Majority nations and their Political-Social Center-points


The following terse comments are based on research using the following sources.
World Values Survey
http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSContents.jsp?CMSID=Findings
Religion, Society, and Politics in the Middle East, by Robert Lee and Lihi Ben Shitrit
http://www.cqpress.com/docs/college/Lust_Middle%20East%2013e.pdf
Middle Eastern Values Study: A Comparative Assessment of Egyptian, Iraqi, Lebanese, Pakistani, Saudi, Tunisian, and Turkish Publics
http://mevs.org/files/tmp/Tunisia_FinalReport.pdf
Pew Research Center: The World's Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society
http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-overview/
Pew Research Center: Chapter 1 (of above study): Beliefs About Sharia
http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia/


Morocco:
A monarchy. Among the most moderate countries on this list, but that belies the general tenor of society. The ruling party of the country, the PJD is a moderate Islamist party, and the prime minister is an Islamist. In other words, the general population is deeply conservative.


Algeria:
Wracked by a civil war through the 1990's between Islamists and a military dictatorship, a war that cost 150,000 lives, recent years have seen much less violence, but Islamism is still strong in this very conservative nation.


Tunisia:
Considered the most moderate Middle Eastern Islamic country, it started the "Arab Spring" and remains the only democratic survivor of that movement that was about as successful as the French Revolution. Even still, as of March, 2015, according to Hassan Mneimneh of the Middle East Institute: From Yemen to Syria, Afghanistan to Tunisia, the Islamist civil war is global. Three main protagonists are engaged in it in Tunisia, with distinctly different approaches on method and increasingly divergent views on the end goal.


Libya:
Shattered by an Arab Spring turned self-destructive, the country is a hotbed of Islamism and fundamentalist thinking.


Egypt:
The Sisi coup overthrew an elected government overwhelmingly represented by the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood, if you don't remember, is the father of modern Islamism and its many incarnations. ISIS and its like are now very active in the Sinai, and regularly orchestrate terrorist outbursts around this very conservative country. The Copts, an ancient Christian sect, are constantly under dhimmatude pressures.


Nigeria:
Boko Haram, an ISIS affiliate, has waged war in Northern Nigeria for 10 years. 17,000 dead and 2 million homeless, as this group attempts to subjugate non-Muslim Nigeria, while ruthlessly controlling the Muslim "region of peace".


Lebanon:
54% Muslim (half Sunni, half Shia) and 40% Christian, this country is divided along many fault lines, all active. The government has been usurped by Hezbollah, an extremist puppet of Iran, which runs its own government and army within the country. As the BBC reports (Five missing Czechs found in Lebanon, 2/1/2016), “Some areas of the Bekaa Valley, east of the capital Beirut, are notorious for lawlessness and drug trafficking.” Lebanon is also a Palestinian hotbed, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are confined to squalid, lawless refugee camps and denied citizenship. Don't look for moderation here any time soon.


Jordan:
Like Morocco, moderate on the surface, but with a seething fundamentalist undercurrent that probably represents 50% of the population. The Palestinian majority is disenfranchised by the Hashemite monarchy.


Syria:
Multiple ethnicities and Muslim sects had been ruthlessly ruled by a small Alewite minority for decades. That control continues to crumble after 5 years of civil war, now driven by a host of competing Islamist militias. Perhaps exhaustion, but not moderation will follow in the wake of this disastrous conflict in which hundreds of thousands have died.


Saudi Arabia:
Ruled by the Saudi family which follows an extremist version of Islam, Wahhabism, there may be dreams of moderation here, but the prevailing ideology is not very different from ISIS.


Turkey:
Once the paragon of a Muslim secular nation, the country took a sharp right turn in 2002, electing the AKP, an Islamist party that has slowly implemented a deeply conservative, anti-Western agenda. Traveling through Anatolia in 1977 I was stunned by the degree of conservatism that prevailed outside of the 3 main cities. I recorded those thoughts in a short story, 'A Pilgrimmage (sic) to Mecca', which I renamed 'A Pilgrimmage to Jerusalem' so as not to offend Muslim sensibilities. That conservatism has only expanded its hold since them. The country has harshly suppressed a Kurdish separatist movement and insurgency, at the cost of over 40,000 deaths, 4000 destroyed villages, and a half a million to a million Kurds forcibly evacuated. Outside of Istanbul and Ankara, don't look for moderation here.


Iraq:
I don't need to tell you about this disaster and the extremism that prevails through innumerable religious, ethnic, and social fault lines. Genocide and ethnic cleansing leave a deeply scarred society.


Iran:
Self-proclaimed leader of the rise of fundamentalist Islam since the revolution in 1977, this country has promoted anti-Western, anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist hatred and violence as a core organizing principle of its ideology. A secular, democratic undercurrent has been harshly suppressed, but Western optimists continue to hope for a successful counter-revolution. I share that hope without optimism.


Afghanistan:
Extremist to the bone. Period. And it has been like that for hundreds of years.


Pakistan:
Quickly rejecting a secular path after its establishment in 1947, Pakistan has progressively implemented the dhimma. Christians and other minority faiths and sects live in danger, having suffered numerous pogroms and suicide bombings. Blasphemy laws are commonly used to oppress the Christian minority along with liberal Muslims. Now, like Afghanistan, large tracts of this country are outside any central rule, and are governed by local Islamist warlords.


Bangladesh:
Aspires towards moderation.


Indonesia:
The most populous Muslim country in the world, it is a working, pluralist democracy. "Most Indonesian Muslims are probably conservative in their beliefs and practices, but don't think they need to vote for a Muslim party or politician to live in the society they prefer," said R William Liddle, a political science professor at Ohio State University, who studies Indonesia. (Al Jazeera, 12 May, 2014)


A Few More Sources:


World Almanac of Islamism:
http://almanac.afpc.org
Institute for Social Policy and Understanding: The Moroccan Path to Islamism,
http://www.ispu.org/pdfs/ISPU_Brief_MorPath-4.pdfThe Middle East Institute:
http://www.mei.edu/
MEMRI, The Middle East Media Research Institute:
http://www.memri.org/
Al Monitor, the pulse of the Middle East
http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/home.html


4. Selected Infographics:

Estimates of Islamist activity:

Wife Must Obey Husband - Percentage that Disagree

Preferences for Women's Dress:

Don't Teach Children Other Religions:

Don't Criticize Religious Leaders:

Don't Allow Criticism of Islam:

Two myths about Jews; Part 1

Two myths about Jews that distort nearly everyone’s thinking about Judaism and Israel.

The following essay discusses two important ideas that shape the myth of Jewishness. Those ideas are defined in Part 1 and their impacts on thought and behavior are discussed in Part 2. The core issue I discuss in Part 2 is how these myths are operative in nearly everyone’s mind, but that the more unconscious they are, the more likely they are to incline one towards anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. (Anti-Zionism: the compulsion to hold Israel to double standards and to blame Israel as the cause of many or most problems in the Middle East. Anti-Zionism culminates in the belief that Israel does not have the right to exist.)

1. The Myth of Chosenness
This can be summarized with the two canards that “1. Jews are chosen and others are not chosen; 2. that being chosen means Jews are inherently better than non-Jews.”

2. The Myth of the Jew-As-Victim
This can be summarized with the canard that “Jews are supposed to be victims,” and when Jews don’t act like victims they need to be blamed, punished, and suppressed to return them to the status of victims. Sometimes the blame and suppression is a response to Jews being successful in various fields, but just as often it is simply a matter of a society that is failing or dysfunctional that needs to divert attention away from itself towards a scapegoat.

Part 1.

The Myth of Chosenness:
Discussing this concept, a friend of mine said:
“I grew a soft spot for Judaism after sharing hearts with [a friend]. But a Buddhist bud grew in me because they (Buddhists) don't choose, certainly not themselves, for the best jobs!”

My friend just put his finger on one of the great historical myths, and it looks like he didn't even know his finger was on it -- the idea that only Jews are chosen, and/or if you want to be chosen you have to be Jewish.

Jews as a ‘chosen people’ has its origins in the Bible, and it has become an important theological pillar in Rabbinic Judaism.
Here’s how I see it:

I do believe Jews are a "chosen people" although that's a term widely misunderstood and often used as a stick to beat us or a stick we use to beat ourselves. When someone hires you to do a job (teach a class, build a house, write a book), they've chosen you. They think you can do the job, and assume you'll do it well, but they may be critical along the way about your work or attitude, and perhaps even be unhappy in the end with the job you do.

So, we Jews believe God chose us. Those 7 simple words imply a vast mythology that has been translated into millenia of living history. We Jews have been chosen to do a job, NOT because we're inherently or genetically better than other people, although history and oppression may have done a fair amount of natural and unnatural selecting over the last 2000 years to make us into a fairly formidable intellectual cohort. We've been chosen (which translates existentially into "we have chosen ourselves") to be a priesthood people, to be a holy people for the sake of upholding and elevating our God and that God's morality, and in bringing that God and that God’s morality to the rest of the world. And if you want to strip God from the picture, nothing much changes. We’ve chosen ourselves to advocate for a universal morality, and for the principle that organizes that morality (a Divine “organizer”).

This is the basic idea, but it doesn’t mean that all or most Jews are actively pursuing these goals. It does mean that for 3000 years this has been one of the principles driving the thoughts and actions of many Jews, especially the rabbis and leading thinkers of most Jewish communities throughout most of these years.

The theology of chosenness and the existential act of self-choosing evolved together. We Jews took on the job (and continue to take it on). Others, mostly, didn't (and don’t). Christianity absolves the individual of the need for works and law. This is one of the primary arguments of the Christian Bible – Christians are absolved from carrying the law (eg. Epistle to the Romans). Instead, Jesus, as Savior does it all once you accept Him. Nonetheless, plenty of Christians, in spite of that, realize that even if Jesus does it all for them, they still have to do it all, too! Read your Kierkegaard, Barth, Niebuhr. Or read your Epistle to the Romans carefully - it still requires being good (law) and doing good (works).

Nonetheless, most Christians (and Muslims, etc) realize that they have to do at least SOMETHING for their own salvation. When they choose to devote themselves to being ethical, compassionate, educated, and/or helping the weak and the poor, they are choosing themselves in a specifically Jewish way even though they do not self-identify as Jews. In the end, history confirms that Christians have chosen themselves to promote virtually the same universal morality as that defined by Jews and the Hebrew Bible.

Buddhists, also are serious self-choosers in this Jewish sense, even though there’s absolutely nothing (to my knowledge) about being “chosen” in Buddhism, and there is little evidence that Judaism has had a significant influence on Buddhist theology. One chooses this particular Buddhist path for the sake of seeking higher states. And those higher states ineluctably include acting with higher standards of morality and compassion. Buddhists who choose this kind of path are not choosing to be Jewish. They are choosing to be Buddhists in a way that broadly overlaps with the Jewish sense of being chosen.

Thus, it is obvious both theologically and existentially that the Jewish idea of chosenness is not limited to Jews.

Now, some Jews will argue that the idea of being chosen is uniquely Jewish, and one can only be chosen by being part of the Jewish people. I disagree. I am distinguishing between the general act of taking on spiritual/moral leadership (chosenness) with the specifically Jewish form of this act. Paul sought to open the Jewish doors of chosenness to Gentiles. Although I don’t agree with Paul on many matters, I think he got that right. (See John Gager’s The Origins of Anti-Semitism, Part IV: The Case of Paul for a careful and insightful analysis of this position.) Just as the Torah is a text for all humanity, and not just for the Jewish people, so the task of chosenness, though spearheaded by the Jewish people, is not, nor should it be exclusive to Jews.

And let me repeat, the Jewish sense of being chosen has NOTHING to do with a belief in genetic or religious superiority. And unlike Muslim and Christian aspirations for establishing their faith as the one, true, and only faith, the Jewish sense of being chosen utterly rejects religious coercion. Nor does it depend on popular acclaim for its substantiation. That Jews are a distinct minority is irrelevant to the importance we place on the idea of chosenness.

In sum, Jews didn't take the best jobs (ie the priesthood tasks, and particularly the jobs of promoting one law and one moral standard for all people), leaving none for anyone else. There are as many “best jobs” as people to take them. Indeed, there’s a “best job” waiting for every single human on the planet. All you have to do is step up!

Nonetheless, the Jewish idea of being a chosen people is bound up with an extremely negative and hate-filled set of counter-ideas. As with every powerful, world-changing idea, chosenness casts a dark and dangerous shadow behind it. From it devolved the idea of Jewish superiority and its negative amplification, that Jews are diabolical and seek world domination. It is bound up with the belief of Jewish spiritual arrogance, as expressed in both Christian and Muslim texts; that Judaism is intolerant of other faiths; that Jews seek to eliminate other religions; that Jews believe there is only one way to know and find God. All of these are false theologically (and also, for the most part, existentially), but they nonetheless maintain a psychological grip on our thinking, Jew and non-Jew alike. The psychological and social impact of this reality is discussed in Part 2 of this essay.

The Myth of Jew as Victim:
Unlike the former myth, this one does not arise from any theological foundations. It is a product of the long history of Jewish exile, with Jews living in a state of social otherness and political disenfranchisement. And in that sense, this is not a myth at all. It has been a primary theme in Jewish reality, a theme that only fairly recently has began to be challenged by the counter-history of modern Zionism. But Zionism has not brought an end to the history of Jew-As-Other and Jew-As-Victim. It has simply brought on another chapter in the story, with different dynamics. The Jew remains vulnerable to victimization around the world, as we read in the newspaper regularly, from the bombing of the Argentine Jewish Community Center in 1994, to rocket fire from Gaza into southern Israel (a daily matter for over 10 years until the Gaza war of 2014), to the targeting and murder of Jews from Mumbai to Kenya to Bulgaria to Belgium to France to the US. This is all ugly living history. It is not myth.

The Jew-As-Victim becomes a myth when it morphs in the human mind to “the Jew is supposed to be a victim.” This insidious transformation has taken on a life of its own, distorting nearly everyone’s thinking. From this perspective, Jews are not supposed to act with self-confidence, and Israel is expected to tolerate Arab terrorism and hatred, and is held to be inherently blameworthy when it responds militarily to such violence.

In Christianity this myth had taken hold by the time of Augustine, who at least in part helped establish as dogma the belief that Jews should be allowed to survive, but as a subjugated and humiliated people, as an example of Christian supersession. It took nearly 1400 years for Christians to begin to seriously question the morality and integrity of this position. It still remains an active ingredient in much Christian thought and in some Christian attitudes towards Israel.

In Islam this myth has been institutionalized in the apartheid-like laws of the dhimma (in which Jews and Christians have a legally inferior status to Muslims; also note that in the dhimma some other religions have an even lower status than Jews and Christians), and I would argue it is a central factor in the Muslim world’s intolerance for an independent Jewish nation.

In the west we see this myth working in the widespread popularity of Woody Allen’s movies and the way he caricaturizes Jews. We also see it politically in the left’s and far right’s double standards for Israel, and in their aggressive misrepresentations of Israel and those who support Israel.

In Part 2 I will expand on the way this myth subtly and unconsciously distorts our understanding of Jews, Judaism, and Israel.

Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, 1

I am composing an essay that I believe will shed more light on the direct relationship between hatred of Israel and historical Jew-hatred. Here is the introduction:

In this essay I will present political, social, and psychological evidence to show that hatred of Israel in it’s many forms, here termed anti-Zionism, is a modern form of historical Jew-hatred, anti-Semitism. Israel is the most obvious image and symbol of Judaism in modern times. Therefore it is no surprise that it is now the foremost target of historic anti-Semitism.

The topic of this essay has been addressed by many others, with some notable articles recently written by Alan Dershowitz, Benjamin Weinthal, Brendan O’Neill, the ADL, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Wikipedia and others (see links at the end of this section). However, with the exception of the Wikipedia article and some examples by O’Neill, these articles focus narrowly on anti-Israel political events and hate-speech, disregarding a wide range of double standards, distortions, and lies. Moreover, virtually no one has looked into the psychological evidence that reveals the active agencies of unconscious hatreds, and that exposes the resistance to honest self-critique when people breach moral standards. I will present some revealing research in this area, and outline a few templates of how people express their often unconscious hatreds and self-hatreds.

The most common critique of the ‘anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism’ equation is that it is simply an attempt to stifle genuine criticism of Israel or to vilify pro-Palestinian sympathies. I believe this is a crude and often mendacious attempt by people to hide their own anti-Semitism, and to avoid self-critique. Israel is not above criticism any more than any other country. Indeed, criticism is a necessary response to every nation’s policies and initiatives.  But criticism of Israel is a different thing than anti-Zionism, the hatred of Israel and the denial of Israel’s right to exist. I will spend a fair amount of time in this essay exposing the distinction between reasonable criticism of Israel and criticism that is shaped by lies, distortions, and double standards, which are the tools of hatred.

Hiding behind doctrine and ideology, including Christianity, Islam, nationalism, communism, and Marxism, Jew-hatred has been and continues to be the foundation of much of what passes as “honest” criticism of Jews and Israel. Now the Gaza war during the summer of 2014 has unleashed a huge surge of anti-Semitic rage that cannot be ignored or dismissed any longer. What follows are seven distinct categories of hypocrisies and double standards that are used to frame those discussions of Israel that are really intended to be lynchings of Israel.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Easily accessible articles that expose important components of the 'anti-Zionism equals anti-Semitism' equation:

3 Dershowitz articles:
Is singling out Israel for boycotts anti-Semitic?
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Is-singling-out-Israel-for-boycotts-anti-Semitic-335596
Europe's Alarming Push to Isolate Israel
http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/Alan-Dershowitz-Nazis-Europe-Israel/2014/03/11/id/558976/
The occupation of Gaza canard
http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/The-occupation-of-Gaza-canard-369370

Weinthal
Why Anti-Zionism Is Modern Anti-Semitism
http://www.nationalreview.com/node/384039/print

O’Neill
Is the Left anti-Semitic? Sadly, it is heading that way
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/brendanoneill2/100281417/is-the-left-anti-semitic-sadly-it-is-heading-that-way/

Wikipedia:
New antisemitism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_antisemitism

The Anti-Defamation League:
http://www.adl.org/anti-semitism/
http://www.adl.org/sp/israel-under-attack/protest-video.html

The Simon Wiesenthal Center website, news and events section:
http://www.wiesenthal.com/site/apps/nl/newsletter2.asp?c=lsKWLbPJLnF&b=4441467#.U-OSamPLd8E
email (and links to articles) with subject: Calls from Berlin to annihilate Jews; "Dirty Jews from the sewers to be killed"; 100 Spanish celebrities accuse Israel of genocide

JNS:
While global anti-Semitism surges, don’t forget U.S. campuses
http://www.jns.org/latest-articles/2014/7/28/while-global-anti-semitism-surges-dont-forget-us-campuses#.U-OKP2PLd8E=

Response to article in Middle East Star

The Middle East Star, on 11/21 published an article entitled:
Hamas should be engaged by Israel – by Ed Husain
I genuinely believe the author does not consider himself an enemy of Israel, but rather an Arab voice, probably a lonely Arab voice, seeking peace. But like a fish that is unaware of the water in which it swims, the author, in reality, remains a voice of Arab hatred and oppression of Israel and Jews.

The whole article can be found at:
http://www.middleeaststar.com/index.php/postc/210875107/scat/940f2bfd509e743b
Here are some critical excerpts that are revealing of the omnipresent hate driving the Arab (and Muslim) world. After these excerpts (in italics), you can find my response.

... I can name tens of Muslim clerics, important formulators of public opinion in a region dominated by religion, that will readily condemn acts of terrorism against the West, but will fall silent when it comes to condemning Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Put simply, support for violent resistance against Israel among Arab and Muslim-majority countries -- including allies of the United States such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Tunisia -- remains popular.

... From radical Iran to moderate Tunisia, Hamas' Prime Minister Ismail Haniyyeh was welcomed by vast cheering crowds during visits this year.

... Israel needs to change. ... A tiny nation of seven million [Israel; 5.25 million Jews] cannot be allowed to damage ties between 360 million Americans and 300 million Arabs.

Here is my critical response:

As ever, the author, although I don’t doubt that he is well-meaning, has it all backwards. 300 million Arabs and 5 million Jews, but our author says the Jews are the problem, not the Arabs! Why are the Jews a problem? Because they are a minority in a region that only knows oppression of minorities. Ask any Copt, any Kurd, any Assyrian Christian. Indeed, ask any Sunni in a Shia country, or Shiite in a Sunni country!

And of course, it is not Israel that "damages ties between 360 million Americans and 300 million Arabs," as the author would have us believe. It is the hatred, violence, and intolerance of the Arab people, institutionalized by governments, mosques, media, and schools that has damaged ties.

Mr. Husain, YOU are the problem, and you are its clearest symbol. You expose with complete clarity the absolute refusal of the Arab world to look at itself and realize how sick, how immoral, and how dysfunctional it is. Until THAT changes, Israel will be just one more excuse for Arab dysfunction.

Is it possible? Turkey is moving towards war with Israel.

Yes, it is possible!! The gears are already in motion, and the Turkish government has made statements (especially concerning warships to Gaza) that will make Erdogan and his party look cowardly or foolish if they back down.

I sent the following letter to my former senator and representative (since we, of DC, are unrepresented in Congress):

I am writing to you, hoping you are already taking serious and comprehensive action to counter the rogue behavior that Turkey is pursuing vis a vis Israel. Some of the obvious markers of that behavior are:
1. Erdogan has aligned his nation with a terrorist organization, Hamas.
2. He has broken full relations with Israel.
3. He has publicly declared that he will send Turkish warships to confront the Israeli blockade of Gaza, in the guise of accompanying "aid" ships.
4. He is meeting with Egyptian officials, as Egypt itself is driven by public and internal government pressure towards conflict with Israel. The likely intent of Erdogan's meeting is for the sake of creating an axis of aggression against Israel from north and south, and likely, with full Iranian and Syrian support.

We must not look on in disbelief or dismay as Erdogan actively moves towards war with Israel. He must be countered by forceful and unambiguous American and NATO pressure. Steps need to be taken immediately, and not merely cautionary pronouncements. We must begin plans to strip Turkey of its place in NATO and replace it with viable alternatives; solicit the help of the Turkish military, whose authority will be greatly diminished by downgrading Turkey in NATO; begin publicly arranging sanctions on trade against Turkey; move Europe forward on closing the door to Turkey's membership in the European Union; and expose the Turkish public to the severe and irresponsible consequences of their government's policies, urging them to exert public pressure to turn those policies around. Naturally, as a Congressperson you are aware of other, and likely better steps the US can and must take to turn Turkey from a path that, if not countered forcefully, may well lead to war with Israel.

I am counting on you to act with prescience and authority to respond to this rogue direction Turkish policy has taken. In my eyes, this is the most serious foreign policy issue the US and Israel face.

NGO’s, the EU, and anti-Zionism

Israel is arguably the most vilified country in the world. This is no coincidence. Before the establishment of Israel, Jews were the most vilified people in the world! Anti-Zionism is simply a modern continuation of this long-standing form of bigotry. Jew hatred is much more than a religious issue. It is equally political, social, economic, and cultural. Anti-Zionism may have religious threads woven into it, but it is primarily a political cloak to Jew-hatred. Israel is vilified because it is a Jewish nation, not because of its policies and behaviors. This does NOT mean that Israel is above criticism. Far from it. Israel, like every nation, and every person, is deserving of plenty of criticism. But the hatred and vilification of Israel is of a different order.

To support that statement, consider the following:

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has historically attracted extraordinary, and largely disproportionate, international attention. Not because of its ferocity: The number of Palestinians killed by Israelis (and vice versa) over the past six decades is probably smaller than the 9,000 Muslim Bosnians massacred in Srebrenica in July 1995 by their Serb and Croatian compatriots and decidedly smaller than the death toll from other conflicts throughout the globe that range in the hundreds of thousands if not millions.

Nor has this obsession been driven by humanitarian considerations. Not only is the Gaza Strip not in the throes of a deep crisis, but the humanitarian situation there is better than in some of the countries whose ships have been sent on occasion to break "the siege" of Gaza. Infant mortality in the Gaza Strip, for example, is 17.71 per thousand births compared to Turkey's 24.84 or the global average of 44; life expectancy in Turkey is 72.23 years whereas in Gaza it is 73.68, much higher than the global average of 66.12, not to mention such Arab or Islamic countries as Yemen (63.36), Sudan (52.52), or Somalia (50). Even by more advanced indicators, such as personal computer use or Internet access, Gazans are in a much better position than many of the world's inhabitants. In the words of the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, no Israel-lover by any stretch of imagination, "an average Congolese citizen would probably have sold his mother into slavery to be able to move to the West Bank."

Those two paragraphs are the opening (but for 1 prior paragraph) of an insightful and well-researched article, NGOs vs. Israel, by Ben-Dror Yemini, the opinion-editor of the Israeli daily Maariv. The full article can be found at Middle East Quarterly, Spring 2011, pp. 67-71,
http://www.meforum.org/2919/ngos-vs-israel
This article is worthy of your careful attention, whether you have a general interest to be well informed about this conflict, or you want to deepen your understanding of the subtle but pervasive reach of Jew-hatred.

found this in my notebook

Those that act with most force in the world
Rarely act for good (or achieve much good).
Those that act with most good in the world
Rarely act with force.

The measure of force required
Is a crude measure of an action's ungood.

Anti-Zionist flotilla, and Israel's dilemma

My son and I had this exchange on facebook:

Josh Berer
hey, I'm sick of all these people dissing Israel! Israel has the right to defend its borders... from unarmed international aid workers.... in international waters... wait.

Stephen Berer
... oh wait again... unarmed?

Josh Berer
and you would kill everyone who didnt share your viewpoint. tell me, when people brand israel a pariah state do you scratch your head and wonder why? or does this look like the actions of a government that cares about a meaningful peace with her neighbors? or one that aspires to be a light unto the nations? when Israel talks about how much she wants peace but the palestinians just won't have it, do actions like these just disappear from your memory?
24 minutes ago

Stephen Berer
easy to talk and criticize from the comfort of the US. This event has made me sick, but Israel has to impress more people than liberals. It has to impress the Jew-hating, Israel-hating politicos from Europe, that they play hardball with Israel at their peril. It has to let Iran know that public opinion will not shape Israel's policies, and it will not be intimidated by ANYONE. It has to let Hezbollah and Hamas know that it will defend it's positions aggressively, ruthlessly, if necessary. Honestly Josh, Israel doesn't need to give a good goddam about your opinion or mine. It has more important fish to fry. Sorry bud.

Learned at a Facing History seminar

As a teacher, one of the most important resources and teaching methods I have encountered is the Facing History and Ourselves approach (http://www.facing.org/home). They describe themselves as "Helping classrooms and communities worldwide link the past to moral choices today."

In an online seminar I am currently taking with them I came across the writings of Eboo Patel, an American Muslim from India. Among his many accomplishments, he is the founder and executive director of the Interfaith Youth Core. I don't often post other people's writings here, but this little anecdote is worth repeating many times. He writes:

When I was in college, I had the sudden realization that all of my heroes were people of deep faith: Dorothy Day, the Dalai Lama, Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Malcolm X, the Aga Khan. Moreover, they were all of different faiths. A little more research revealed two additional insights. First, This reading contains excerpts from Eboo Patel’s, Acts of Faith: The Story of an American Muslim, the Struggle for the Soul of a Generation. religious cooperation had been central to the work of most of these faith heroes. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. partnered with Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel in the struggle for civil rights. Mahatma Gandhi stated that Hindu Muslim unity was just as important to him as a free India. Second, each of my faith heroes assumed an important leadership role at a young age. King was only twenty-six years old when he led the Montgomery bus boycott. Gandhi was even younger when he started his movement against unjust laws in early-twentieth-century South Africa.

. . . In high school, the group I ate lunch with included a Cuban Jew, a Nigerian Evangelical, and an Indian Hindu. We were all devout to a degree, but we almost never talked about our religions with one another. Often somebody would announce at the table that he couldn’t eat a certain kind of food, or any food at all, for a period of time. We all knew religion hovered behind this, but nobody ever offered any explanation deeper than “my mom said,” and nobody ever asked for one.

This silent pact relieved all of us. We were not equipped with a language that allowed us to explain our faith to others or to ask about anyone else’s. Back then, I thought little about the dangers lurking within this absence. A few years after we graduated, my Jewish friend reminded me of a dark time during our adolescence. There were a group of kids in our high school who, for several weeks, took up scrawling anti-Semitic slurs on classroom desks and making obscene statements about Jews in the hallways. I did not confront them. I did not comfort my Jewish friend. I knew little about what Judaism meant to him, less about the emotional effects of anti-Semitism, and next to nothing about how to stop religious bigotry. So I averted my eyes and avoided my friend, because I couldn’t stand to face him.

A few years later, he described to me the fear he had experienced coming to school those days, and his utter loneliness as he had watched his close friends simply stand by. Hearing him recount his suffering and my complicity is the single most humiliating experience of my life. I did not know it in high school, but my silence was betrayal: betrayal of Islam, which calls upon Muslims to be courageous and compassionate in the face of injustice; betrayal of America, a nation that relies on its citizens to hold up the bridges of pluralism when others try to destroy them; betrayal of India, a country that has too often seen blood flow in its cities and villages when extremists target minorities and others fail to protect them. My friend needed more than my silent presence at the lunch table.

Pluralism is not a default position, an autopilot mode. Pluralism is an intentional commitment that is imprinted through action. It requires deliberate engagement with difference, outspoken loyalty to others, and proactive protection in the breach. You have to choose to step off the faith line onto the side of pluralism, and then you have to make your voice heard. To follow Robert Frost, it is easy to see the death of pluralism in the fire of a suicide bombing. But the ice of silence will kill it just as well.

Kristallnacht remembered

Tonight is the night in 1938 when the German high command convinced itself that it could do anything to Jews and other minorities in its midst, and the world would do nothing to stop it. Tonight is the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the euphemism for the state-sponsored pogrom against German and Austrian Jews on Nov. 9 and 10 of 1938.

On Nov. 9, 2001 I led a city-wide commemoration of Kristallnacht in Victoria, BC, Canada. The following were my opening remarks. Although eight years have passed, my concerns are precisely the same today as they were then.

Tonight is the 63rd anniversary of Kristallnacht. In the past I have tried, in these opening moments, to welcome you, and thank you for understanding why it’s so important to remember Kristallnacht, and the Shoah. In previous years that might have been necessary, since the reality of Kristallnacht seemed so removed from our lives here in Victoria.

But this year, unexpectedly, shockingly, the differences between Kristallnacht and this moment are not so different. Once again we see hatred becoming the dominant ideology of a people. I am forced to conclude that, having failed to see and address the rising tide of hatred in the Muslim world, I/we have failed to truly learn the lessons of Kristallnacht. In 1932 the signs were plain to see and the world ignored them, and good Germans ignored them or made excuses for them. We have done the same, and good Muslims have done the same. And throughout the 30's the free world tried to appease and make concessions to the rising tide of nazism. It made good economic sense, and of course one had to be politically realistic.

And the same is true in this era. We have not wanted to believe the depth and the extent of the envy and hatred that has deeply damaged the Muslim world. We have become used to, and desensitized to the accusations, and curses, and tirades, made by ideologues. We have watched, mute or unconcerned, as the gorgeous melody and poetry of the call to prayer has become a call to hatred and to war. We have somehow come to sympathize with, or at least accept as a valid side to the argument, the claim that the Muslim people are victims, and the problem is Israel.

The problem is not Israel, and the problem is not the United States. The problem is the ideology of envy and hatred that has been carefully nurtured in the Muslim world for most of this century.

And so we looked on the events of Sept. 11, much as the world looked upon Kristallnacht in 1938, wondering, how could this happen. And in that cold November in 1938, the dangerous slope into world war turned icy and inevitable. I do not know if we are on an equally icy slope into world war right now, but if there is still a way to turn back, it must begin now. It must begin by helping moderate Muslims, who love and value democracy and multi-cultural respect, to reassert their primacy in the world-wide Muslim community.

Jews and Christians cannot go into the mosques to redirect the nature and quality of the dialog. We don’t have that authority. Only Muslims can do that. Christians and Jews cannot speak for Islam in the Muslim media. Moderate Muslims must do that. And it is not enough if they simply make their voices heard; they must take control of the debate.

If there is a Muslim in this congregation, hear me. You are not only our last hope; more importantly, you are your own people’s last hope. Germany’s name has been forever besmirched because of it’s ideology of hatred. Don’t let that happen to your faith. In the name of God, defend your honor not with hatred and violence, but through an ideology of peace and mutual respect. And may it be God’s will.

Natural Gradients, Part II stevespell

This is the stevespell recension of Natural Gradients. My suggestion is to use the normspell version, posted July 17, as a guide to unpack this recension. FYI, I’m still struggling with the first stanza, the introduction.

This recension includes a number of Arabic/Muslim terms. Most are noted and defined in the text, except these three: shahid (shahheedz), Shahada (shahhoddaz), and sharia (sharreya). Shahid is a martyr, although currently the term has strong overtones of terrorism. Shahada is the Muslim profession of faith. Sharia is the Muslim body of law.

II. Dissintegrel Plasez, Innershel Fors

Theze lower werlz, divvienlee bliend
Tu the kalkuless konnekten Seel* tu deed.
               * sum say “The Werd”
How konshents abenden in the hewman feelz,
Dekayz in hate, verb and reverb,
Til the Seel iz torn ov its knowen root.
The hate-sik men, loss thaer gide,
Flownder intu thaer oen noos.

So goez Eron and the Kanannite horz
In sexuwel frenzeez, all hate an despaerz.
The dotteren Libnon an Gozza depraevd
Spred thaer legz an bluddee rape.
Thaer sunz thay bedek in dinammite
Tu pay obesans tu thaer molokh godz.
Idel worshippen the toolz a deth,
Thay spind until thay baenkerrupt.
All konsumen thay morrel det.
     The Juj a naeshenz, iz bend them kors
     And bend thay neez a biter remors.

Sureya, Arrabeya: a blowen sanz.
A breth divvine iz blo yu owt.
Sureya, jest a toothless maw;
Arrabeya, all achoek in tar.
Stomp yur fout and shaek yur fist,
But nun afeerd, an mennee spit,
A breth divvine, the windz revers,
An sandz inter yur liefless werks.

Felastinnee, witherz yur roots.
Ware yur foutpathz in the aenshen hillz?
Mennee the fabel, few the maps.
Ware iz the shepper leed yu sheep?
Tu sakraffise! Yur blud so cheep.
Deth by drone or suwasside;
Deth the oenlee hoep yu kno.
Deth bekumz yu, Felastee.
Hu ar yu? A mith a desees.

Ejipt iz a rotten ship.
Usa-buks ar plug it hoel,
An set the kors iz kapten chart,
But underdeks a brutherhoud
Iz seethen por, extremen heet.
Sparkz a leep, ignite a berth
Engulpen all in Misserree.*
               * Mis’r is the Arabic for Egypt

Erak, Pakkastan: rejen ov pees?*
               * Dar al Islom
Rajen a pesez for jakkel an kro.
Shahheedz an shahhoddaz, sharreya* in shrowdz,
               * 3 Islamic terms; see above
Furee an deth-wish a relijjes vowz.
The mud flats krakkel in persisten drowt.
A kaffeya unravvelz on a dried owt reed.
Trikkellen blud an a kar in flaemd.
Sekt an tribe the fragmen a state.

Ewrope, nostaljen, reternz tu the slash
An bern ov sikkel an kattel kar.
Az evree extreem in its oppazzit meet;
Leftess proffessenz an notsee kreeps.
Tugether, drunk on the mithek Jew,
Obsesst tu klip hem egel weengz,
Az faro did, an maek em groen.
Kno thay not wut faroez fate?
But slopee thot it roelz the way
An mith an trueth an self deseet
An arraggans all innermix.
But Ziyon fenikslife endorz.
     So hate ye Ziyon wile ye may.
     Yur beer awaets. Yur drunken nite
     Will end at yur dissonner grave.

Kerserz ov Ziyon in a titen biend
Tu kontroel the mith kontrolen yu.
Like Layokkowon, yu kannot unwiend
The koyeld konfuze agrip ov yu.
Islom, ware iz yur self-kritteek?
A kompashen, a merseeful God, yu pray?
Re-rit yur Korron. Now it say:
     “In the name of the errashennat, the kerseeful,”
     “Thare iz no God; mo tromma iz owwer messij.”
Yur ulamma* sez the jehod iz meen
               * Muslim legal scholars
     “Wor iz a shor a pruver a faeth.”
But wut leeder say, “we ar da falt!
     “Owwer faeth iz an utter desrepaer;
     “Vilens an anger a braken ar law.”
O the nacherrel gradeyenz
Muev in arks we kant perdikt.
Dar al Islom iz no mor,
And Islom iz now a Dar al Horb.

Natural Gradients, Part II

My blog has been much too quiet as I have been working studiously to complete Part II of Natural Gradients (Nacherrel Gradeyenz). Part II particularly, is a difficult and controversial statement, as you will see, and so I have worked with especial care and concern for accuracy, altho I expect I will offend not a few people. I have not yet completed the stevespell recension, which I hope to post in a day or two, but here is the normspell. Like Part I above, posted on June 28, the two versions are complementary, but by no means identical. Each should help expand the insights of the other.

In the text below you will need to know three Muslim terms: “dhimma,” “Dar al Islam,” and “Dar al Harb.” You can google them to find a range of meanings and usages.

Briefly, as I understand and use them, the dhimma is the body of Islamic laws dealing with non-Muslims. It means “protected” but many, if not most non-Muslims would consider that a euphemism. Jews and Christians do not have equal status to Muslims under the law. “Idolaters” like Hindus and Buddhists have even lower status. Bluntly, it is a legal system of apartheid, pure and simple.

“Dar al Islam” and “Dar al Harb” are complementary terms. “Dar” can be translated as “region;” “Islam” as “peace,” and “harb” as war. The Dar al Islam is that portion of the world where governments and social norms are based on Islam (the religion). The Dar al Harb is the rest of the world. In Muslim ideology the whole world must be brought to Islam. Naturally, not all Muslims believe that, but it is, and always has been a dominant force in Islam.

I find it ironic that so many Muslims are bitter about Western colonialism, when in fact, Islam is a fundamentally colonialist religion. Its outer borders have always been regions of war as it has sought to bring the whole world into the Dar al Islam, while other cultures have fought to maintain (or expand) their own identities. The modern ring of conflict around the Muslim world is not something new or unusual in history. But let us not forget that Christianity, capitalism, and Marxism, among other ideologies, have been equally expansionist and ringed by conflict.

Nacherrel Gradeyenz
Natural Gradients
II. Dissintegrel Plasez, Momenz ov Inersha

And so it is in these lower worlds
Where dissembling despots gag on lies,
And choke their sickly souls in hate.
In quicksand to their necks, they flail
And point, accusing those they fear,
Clueless they are soon to sink away.
A coin flipped, a data point forgot.

You Zion haters! You bigot nations,
Led by Iran and Lebanon.
You think your place in the world secure,
And time will serve your hate-filled ends,
But day by day you sink in the muck
Of your hate and lies and your moral debt.
The Judge of nations, that strange attractor,
Will call your debt and melt you down.

Syria, Arabia: blowing sands
Erase your borders, a storm divine.
Petromuck pollutes your lands.
And petrogold pollutes your soul.
You walk the world with arrogance,
But wolves gather to tear you apart.

Palestinian: can an orchard grow
In a dry wadi or watered with salt?
How then can your people arise,
Nurtured on the salt of Arab hate,
And your parched self-image: an anti-Jew?

Egypt: your greatness was stripped long ago.
From pharaoh your fate as a minor state.
Now the Brotherhood will cause your place,
Petty as it is, to disappear.

Iraq, Pakistan: flay yourselves.
Like a sick old man with multiple ills:
A hundred doctors, a hundred scalpels,
Tearing your sick and wrinkled bodies.

You anti-Zionists! Show me what good
You bring to the world. I see nothing!
No arts, no science, no freedom of thought.
But this you have in great abundance:
Your hanging judges, your dhimma laws,
Your people muzzled, your knowledge twisted,
Classrooms that teach your children to hate.
Rival warlords terrorize your streets;
The most vicious are those that rule the state.
You squander your wealth on death machines
Driven by the jihad that Islam breeds.
Dar al Islam is the Dar al Harb!
A parable of hatred is all you are.

And you think you anti-Zionists in Europe
Won’t stumble and fall, just the same?
You leftist professors, skinheads, nazis,
Vomiting your hatred in double standards.
You march through your halls with your jackboot books,
Your political positions, mere billy clubs.
Say it straight, like your teacher Horst Wessel:
Jews should be weak and live in fear.
And Israel’s strength is just too much to bear.