I went to a few dinners like that when I was in occupied Palestine but they were back in the days when if you suggested that the Palestinians and their rights should be respected your hosts or companions didn't turn nasty, they assumed you were only joking.
levi9909 | Homepage | 11.09.09 - 4:47 am | #

A telling account. Deeply depressing but instructive.
Then does the Shabbat ritual (and the rest of Judaism sui generis) mean anything or is it merely going through the motions?
re the speculation on the unsavoury Australians.
I suspect nothing to do with the status or treatment of the Australian aboriginal population, though of course that remains a running sore.
Rather my speculation is that the Australian Jewish community has increasingly become more ghetto-ised out of choice. Earlier generations, for economic reasons, sent their children to public schools. THere has been an explosion of Jewish faith schools, whose mission statements appear to near universally preach moral virtue along with 'love of Israel'. Add all the proselytising camps. I'm surprised that they haven't tried to start their own universities (like the Catholics). But the 'Jewish Studies' departments at some Australian universities (full of rank Zionists) does the right job.
I'm speculating as to the connection between the wretched individuals described in this account and the enveloping infrastructure in Australia, but it's as plausible as any other connection.
Israel can now boast some exemplary bigots who have migrated from Australia.
ej | 11.09.09 - 8:02 am | #

Very interesting account...
Gert | Homepage | 11.09.09 - 4:36 pm | #

He missed the part where they all mainline ziocaine before dinner.
Mooser | 11.09.09 - 11:30 pm | #

I'm just back from two weeks in Palestine and had many moving, sometimes heartbreaking conversations over dinners, but never any racism. In fact the same person who told me why she had never seen the sea, or fresh fish, or the fruits and trees where her mother was born, also told me of her fellow feeling for Israelis born in the land who now could in fact call it home.
on another point have you seen the news, on the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, of attempts at Belin and elsewhere to break down the Apartheid Wall? "Palestinians and foreign activists have torn down segments of Israel's separation wall in a demonstration marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall." http://english.aljazeera.net/ new...1639325464.html
David Hillman | 11.09.09 - 11:31 pm | #

He says, at the end, that he'll go back, he enjoyed the dinner and the company, and those Israelis is not so different than you an' me.
Mooser | 11.10.09 - 12:21 am | #

"Because the point of this post is not that these are 'bad people', like the Nazis or Cossacks, separated by a safe and reassuring moral space from 'good people', such as myself. It is, rather, that the distance between any of us is so small, and that eternal vigilance is required of all of us,"

I don't know, I would say there is a vast distance between how are, and those who are not, willing to use murder to achieve their ends. Maybe it makes a difference which way the guns are pointed.
Me, I'd stay the hell away from them.
Mooser | 11.10.09 - 12:25 am | #

OT: I just learned from Ethan Bronner that Netanyahu wants "negotiations [with the PA] without preconditions". Nice example of how dominant discourse makes stuff vanish - apparently the innumerable preconditions (most importantly, that the Palestinians accept the results of ethnic cleansing in 1948 and after 1967) are so intuitively "right" to Bronner he doesn't even perceive them as conditions.
christian h. | Homepage | 11.10.09 - 1:01 am | #

The inconsequence of Palestinian Arabs at the end of a pointed gun is reflected in a 5 November piece of maximum import on JC.com concerning the diabolical price of kosher chooks.
http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-new...hrut-price- cuts
'The £2 Tesco chicken was cited as an example of cheap non-kosher food being sold across Europe. A kosher chicken costs five times more. ... Their failure to eat kosher erodes their Jewish identity and their insulation from non-Jewish society.'
Israel and its environs remain alas suffused with non-Jewish society. A work in progress. Pass me that gun ...
ej | 11.10.09 - 3:45 am | #

I don't know, I would say there is a vast distance between how are, and those who are not, willing to use murder to achieve their ends. Maybe it makes a difference which way the guns are pointed.


I'd say that, at least since Giotto, we are aware that the distance between two objects depends on how far back the observer stands in relation to them.

So if you stand back from yourself, the distance between you and other people will shrink. Try it at home. It is a fun experiment.

Sometimes, of course, stepping back is nothing other than running away. It's all about context, and that too depends on where you stand.
evildoer | Homepage | 11.10.09 - 2:37 pm | #

Yeah, that article really was telling. I understand the author's concern. Why, if the Israelis keep on acting this way, they might end up actually doing something bad one of these days. Hard to conceive, but it might happen!
Mooser | 11.10.09 - 10:04 pm | #

I found the rest of the post to be even more interesting in some ways than what you posted.

I suspect that Aaron Levitt has become a bit more radical in the last couple of years. It looks good on him.
edwin | 11.10.09 - 11:19 pm | #

Ah - i'm mixing my Aaron's up a bit. no matter. Still liked the section after the post a lot.
edwin | 11.11.09 - 12:34 am | #

A typical shoot-and-cry screed if you ask me.
A standard hasbara inversion (with a one-and-a-half forward twist) of No.4 "The Whole World Sucks"
Mooser | 11.12.09 - 4:26 pm | #

"Then does the Shabbat ritual (and the rest of Judaism sui generis) mean anything or is it merely going through the motions?"

Are you asking if God has stopped taking our calls or if we perhaps are dialing a wrong number?
Mooser | 11.12.09 - 4:28 pm | #