Is this anti-semitism?

Forget it, can't seem to get across what I mean.

just b/c muslims have been accused of similar doesn't mean the image isn't loaded in the context of european anti-semitism

http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/134712/pinkwashing-sarah-schulman?all=1

But the most revealing of Schulman’s interactions was with Jayson Littman, a New York-based organizer of social events for gay Jewish men who has led gay-themed Birthright trips to Israel. Last spring, Littman sent a proposal titled “The Myth of Pinkwashing,” which, along the line of Jonathan Miller’s, explained that the Israeli government’s advertising its gay life is primarily about tourism dollars, not propaganda. Schulman sent him a similar response to the ones she fired off to the other three individuals described above. Littman’s dedication to connecting gay Jews with Zionism, however, appears to have made him a prominent target of Schulman’s florid campaign to portray any and all mention of gay life in Israel as part of a dark Israeli government-controlled conspiracy to oppress Palestinians.

In a November 2012 interview with the British lesbian magazine Diva, Schulman said that “the more I work in this arena, the more aware I become of the involvement of the Israeli government in the US LGBT community.” She named Littman, among others, as “Israeli government operatives … who work for the Foreign Ministry, whose job it is to work our community along pinkwashing lines.” Among their tasks, she said, are to “plant stories in newspapers, co-opt our events … and flood websites with propaganda.”

I think the best response to the "pinkwashing" canard is "Even if that's true, isn't it a good thing for countries to be more open to LGBT people, whatever the reason?" I mean, any country in the world is free to engage in "pinkwashing" and few seem to do so.

But no, I don't think there's anti-semitism at play here

Really?

wtf criticism of israel (even if it's paranoid and weird) is not necessarily anti-semitism

or is it all crypto-anti-semitism to you?

i think that the accusation that all Jews who are pro-Israel are shadow employees of the Israeli government is pretty anti-semitic and taps into all kinds of conspiratorial thinking about Jews

"the more I work in this arena, the more aware I become of the involvement of the Israeli government in the US LGBT community.”

they've been infiltrated!

http://i.imgur.com/M10CaVT.png

Mossad is pushing the Gay Agenda!?! I have to inform freerepublic.com about this...

i think that the accusation that all Jews who are pro-Israel are shadow employees of the Israeli government is pretty anti-semitic and taps into all kinds of conspiratorial thinking about Jews
― Mordy , Sunday, June 16, 2013 3:14 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, i guess that's true, wasn't thinking it through. similar logic to that used by the iranian government in their kangaroo trials of jewish-iranian "spies."

Mossad is pushing the Gay Agenda!?! I have to inform freerepublic.com about this...

― This Is My Design, and I Used Helvetica (Viceroy), Sunday, June 16, 2013 4:22 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

or the various evangelical zionists. of course those guys must live with a ton of cognitive dissonance every day so this would probably just bounce off them.

well a lot of those evangelical zionists just want jews in the holy land so they can be beheaded on judgment day so i'm not sure they care about the gay agenda.

well a lot of those evangelical zionists just want jews in the holy land so they can be beheaded on judgment day so i'm not sure they care about the gay agenda.

― Gukbe

I think they care about both -- but which is more important, rebuilding the temple or stopping the ever growing tolerance for homosexuals? Dunno... like amateurist said I imagine Zionist Christian Conservatives have a hell of alot of cognitive dissonance for many different reasons and IMO a hatred/fear of Muslims is the only tenuous thread connecting their various beliefs.

well i think you need a fair amount of cognitive dissonance to be an evangelical and just *live*. I guess my point was that there is a certain section of evangelical zionists who don't give a shit about the welfare of Jewish people or what they do, just as long as they serve their purpose as foretold by their interpretation of the Bible.

Ah I see. I totally agree. They are some really creepy bastards -- I remember seeing a documentary (a TV one I think)? from a while back and this one guy one's a ranch where he raises only red heifers and attempts to breed one with the exact color described in the bible.

A lot of evangelicals believe that other protestant christians of different denominations are going to hell, so how much can they really care about a religion that doesn't consider Jesus the Son of God? At best there is a belief that "Israel is our ally" and they're going to help stop the invading muslim hordes, but it's all self-serving.

Hell, I was taught in elementary school that the rapture would come when there was peace in the middle east, so i actively prayed that there would not be peace so the rapture wouldn't happen. Bunch of nutjobs but, hey, religion ya know.

IT'S YOUR FAULT

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yLNK4V1XOpk/Tzf9iWHJLvI/AAAAAAAAA4A/W85H7r5nGZg/s1600/Grimms%2Bcover%2BBritish%2BLibrary.jpg

lol going through this book w my daughter, gonna have some explaining to do about "The Jew in the Thorns" and a few other tales. on one hand I appreciate the inclination to preserve these kinds of things in as close to their original state as possible (preface makes a big deal about how this is the exact reproduction of a version the editor had as a child etc), because this is how things were and the historical record shouldn't be whitewashed or cleaned up. these stories are violent, weird, racist, dreamlike and paint a picture of bygone worlds. otoh I'm always kind of taken aback when I stumble unexpectedly against something in material for children that will require a bunch of explanation on my part (see also my mo-in-law's copy of Little Black Sambo ugh)

the story in question

charming!

I like how the protagonist in these stories often unfairly provokes/tortures/maligns the Jew, only to have the Jew try to redress grievances, overplay his hand, and meet his "deserved" doom.

Reminds me of that Louis CK bit about having to explain his racist grandmother,

i wrote about that story in grad school!

shakey, let me know if u want to see it - apparently i've got it saved as a .doc on this computer

haha sure why not

wow, what a bizarre story. almost nihilistic.

The real villain seems to be the rich man who decides not to pay his servant just because he can get away with it. If anything, it's the master who behaves like the stereotype of the "Jew." Yet the master isn't mentioned again in the story. Meanwhile we don't even know if the Jew really stole the money or is merely confessing to end the torture -- after all, he falsely states that the servant "honestly earned it."

Mordy, perhaps you've looked into this -- depending on if this was early or late middle ages a heller was either worth quite a bit or nearly worthless. Are we supposed to think that all this was over a small fortune, or mere pocket change? I'm not sure if it matters much since TBH this tale makes no fuckin' sense to me at all, but it would be some interesting context.

It's implied that a heller is very little:

With this he put his hand into his pocket, then counted out three hellers one at a time, saying, "There, you have a heller for each year. That is a large and generous reward. Only a few masters would pay you this much."

The good servant, who understood little about money, put his wealth into his pocket, and thought, "Ah, now that I have a full purse, why should I worry and continue to plague myself with hard work?"

Also interesting is the footnote that said the original story featured a Christian monk instead of a Jew.

Oh, and:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2ChkJFYFfsM/TfJxjGIFiWI/AAAAAAAABfc/Nodj_asraHM/s1600/011.JPG

Reading Child's Ballads it disquieting how many of the songs are anti-semitic, or have anti-semitic variations. It's not like Scotland was famed for it's huge Jewish population - so strange that all these fishermen chose to sing about such things.

some of the most anti-semitic places in the world have very few or no jews

people back in earlier centuries wouldn't even have thought of them as "anti-semitic" -- they're just like anything else, commonly accepted generalizations.

Anti-semitic Child's Ballads? Never heard of that before.

I think in some cultures "Jew" was something in between an archetype and a mythic creature, rather than a person you met on the street.

hurting i sent u webmail btw

thx, don't check that address that much, will check

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/eng/child/ch155.htm

Interesting, well that's a new one on me!

I think in some cultures "Jew" was something in between an archetype and a mythic creature, rather than a person you met on the street.

- but spinoza didn't believe in the holy trinity.

- spinoza was a jew.

- what's a jew?

- you never saw a jew before? here. i have some sketches.

- no kidding! do they all have these horns?

- no. this is the russian jew. the german jew has these stripes.

x-post

Yeah, it's odd because of the universal 'lose a ball in someone's garden' idea - that house on your street you run past as a kid. Only this time it's used as blood libel.

lol dfl

er dlh

I like how the protagonist in these stories often unfairly provokes/tortures/maligns the Jew, only to have the Jew try to redress grievances, overplay his hand, and meet his "deserved" doom.

― temporarily embarassed millionaire (Shakey Mo Collier), Monday, June 17, 2013 7:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

isnt this kind of the merchant of venice

I think in some cultures "Jew" was something in between an archetype and a mythic creature, rather than a person you met on the street.

― i don't even have an internet (Hurting 2), Tuesday, June 18, 2013 11:07 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

such as the suburbs of toronto ime

That stuff about pinkwashing upthread is interesting.

Jayson Littman, a New York-based organizer of social events for gay Jewish men who has led gay-themed Birthright trips to Israel. Last spring, Littman sent a proposal titled “The Myth of Pinkwashing,” which, along the line of Jonathan Miller’s, explained that the Israeli government’s advertising its gay life is primarily about tourism dollars, not propaganda.

I've been looking for Littman's article mentioned here and can't find it. However, is there really that secure a boundary between a country doing something for 'tourism dollars' vs for 'propaganda'? I mean it's not like, for Israel or for any country, money from tourists only goes into special, benign parts of the economy, is it? Large (economically significant) groups of people coming to spend money in a country, contribute that money to whatever that country is currently doing, including e.g. paying for someone's hotel or museum to stay open but also e.g. paying for that country's war effort.

This is also, of course, v. relevant to Saudi Arabia and indeed the US and the UK and their tourist industries.

Yeah but starting from that premise anything does for tourism or exports would be ____washing. Is promoting christian holy sites "christwashing"? Is selling jaffa oranges abroad "fruitwashing"? I mean if you believe in complete boycott/divestiture, fine. But I don't get what is particularly sinister about Israel promoting openness to gay and lesbian culture.

But I don't get what is particularly sinister about Israel promoting openness to gay and lesbian culture.

I don't know if there actually is anything sinister about it. At last when you put it in those terms.

But if pressed to 'find something sinister about it' ... a nasty part of me envisions a certain kind of stupid, materialistic person - who could be straight or gay, male or female - who likes traveling and partying and having fun. And this demographic doesn't give a fuck about, like, some oppression or like some war or something over in (wherever it is) because (wherever it is) has these great beaches, and cool nightclubs where you can drink alcohol, and take drugs, and have sex with attractive people!

Which seems pretty sinister. If these people exist. Sometimes I think they do, sometimes I think I'm being weird and hung up (cough and/or a massive hypocrite).

But Israel being 'open to gay and lesbian people', obvs only a good thing. When you put it like that, in idealistic terms.

It's more the party party fun fun we don't give a fuck culture I find sinister, really, and the way Israel (or, as should be made clear, literally any other country you care to name) can tap into that as source for money and a good image as a party party sort of place. Such that when that country bombs a few schools or whatever, people in the US and the UK think 'Oh, they're the party party place, they must have a good reason for bombing those schools or whatever'.

And the way that that party party let's all party culture is now absorbing something called 'being gay', at least in the UK, or well, at least in cardamon's nasty little box he possibly shouldn't have climbed out of today.

You might find it interesting to know that I had a conversation with someone in Israel who actually works for the government sort of doing international PR as it were, and she had similar reservations but from the other side -- she didn't have any problem with gay rights, gay culture, etc., but she felt like it was kind of frivolous and inappropriate to be focusing on promoting gay party life.