Friday, June 13, 2008
This is just a quick link to follow -- an "aside." These are links to interesting things that, for one reason or another, I didn't place into a full posting. Click the link to visit the full article. Go to the blog index for a regular listing of posts.
Robert Solomon Wistrich: Antisemitism Embedded in British Culture - '...English literature and culture are drenched in antisemitic stereotypes. Major British authors throughout the centuries transmitted culturally embedded antisemitism to future generations. Although they did not do so deliberately, it was absorbed and has had a long-term, major impact on British society...'
I think this is a must-read article. The impact of British antisemitism is huge, not only because it's impacted the Jews of Europe per se, but also because of long-lasting foreign policy ramifications that have affected - and continue to impact - Middle Eastern and Israeli Jews and Arabs.
The global reach of British media has, as the author states, added another dimension to the way the Jewish people and Eretz Israel are perceived. Probably this also adds to the conflict, rather than helping to resolve it.
Seeing this is one thing - figuring out what to do about it is another story. It seems to be getting worse, affecting even a well-meaning attempt by a British Muslim to meet with the Israeli ambassador - some lord in Wales wants to boycott the meeting and disapproves of it!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/7447750.stm
Because Britain is America's "mother country" at least in linguistic terms, the reinforcement of antisemitic and anti-Israel sentiment is particularly dangerous to Jews here in the US. Young people, seeking to form opinions and just learning about the world, find dreadfully slanted articles, opinion pieces and cartoons in the Guardian and simply the phrasing of pieces in the BBC or via Reuters has a devastating effect - devastating in no small part because it seems so low key. The portrayal of Jews as "cabals" or all-powerful manipulators - especially if "white" blood is supposedly shed on the behalf of Jews - are of course very old memes which have proven almost impossible to extirpate. All too often these ideas have found expression in action - or inaction - as in the fact that the ships of Shoah refugees were turned away during and after WWII and no military action was taken against the camps. Now that Israel exists as a state, anti-Zionism is overlapping with traditional forms of antisemitism; the two forms of bigotry feed one another.
The single most confusing aspect of this to me is the role of the Trots. That I simply don't get. Most of the other forms of antisemitic behavior seem to be rooted in religious and cultural prejudice that is hundreds and hundreds of years old and follows the Christian slander and supercession of the Jewish people. Lately this is being reinforced by Muslim prejudice, some of which is religious and some political.
Probably because it's so nonsensical at root, the Soviet-based association between Israel and "capitalism" or "imperialism" can be argued against with logic and may die away in time. But the really old antisemitic memes seem nearly impossible to defeat. These are reinforced by the English caste system which is strikingly undemocratic - but which nevertheless continues to exert a powerful influence on the imagination, even here.
The fact is, Jews are quintessential outsiders in a system that still reveres the landed gentry and the so-called aristocracy, and continues to worship the idea of The Prince - in England's case, also the leader of the Christian institution.
It scares me how little we've progressed since the Middle Ages.