Yes, I know. Jihadis are supposed to be Muslim. After all, Islam created the concept. But I’m afraid that it’s somehow rubbed off on many right wing Jews. They need to see all of Islam arrayed against all of Judaism in a holy war in which we will all fight to the death. I’m not sure where that gets them other than to a species-wide dead end. But let it not be said that human attitudes and behavior ever follows a rational course especially when fueled by hate and revenge.
In all this I’m referring to the entirely depressingly hostile response in the Comment is Free thread to my post yesterday about the Mumbai attacks. I argued a number of points but the main one attempted to distinguish between a terror attack that would be motivated by anti-Semitism as opposed to anti-Israelism. Contrary to what my Jewish jihadi opponents claim, it’s not either a morally bankrupt or theoretical distinction.
The Mumbai terrorists clearly stated that their attack was in revenge for Palestinian suffering and that they saw Chabad House as an Israeli target. In the Forward, an Indian who spoke for hours with the Chabad House terrorist never indicated in his report that anti-Semitic words were spoken to him. To be clear, I am not diminishing the horror of the murder of innocent hostages, whatever their national or religious origin. That is not at all the point.
Rather, I’m try to carefully approach a complicated issue so as not to get sucked into the vortex of hate and revenge spewed by all terror attacks. That is why I completely correctly and justifiably distinguished between anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli terror. In fact, none of the media reports and none of the supposed evidence marshalled by any of my opponents have pointed to the terrorists, chilling as their acts were, being motivated by a global hatred of Jews.
Why is this important? Because when two sides of a conflict are divided over a political or territorial dispute it can be resolved. But when they are guided by global hatred of an entire religion, then such a dispute is almost impossibly intractable.
If you want to characterize the attack as anti-Semitic, you have to have some idea of how the terrorists saw the target. Imposing your own interpretation of their motives on the attack would be as if a Jew killed a Palestinian and Muslims claimed to know the killer’s mind and stated with certainty that he hated all Muslims and the attack was part of a holy war against Islam. How would they know unless the killer said so explicitly (which the Mumbai killers did not)?
My Jewish jihadi friends NEED to see the Mumbai attack as based in anti-Semitism because they either wish to, or are prepared to concede a religious holy war between Islam and Judaism in which we will all fight to the death leaving a world in which none of us shall remain standing.
I however, want to see the Israeli Arab conflict resolved so that both sides can eventually live in peace.
Now, at the peacefully negotiated conclusion of this conflict there may still remain religious haters on both sides who will not be satisfied until we fight each other in an Armageddon like cosmic battle. But by then, after the major issues are resolved, the din will subside and the jihadis on both sides will not have an audience.
So if you wish to see the Mumbai attack as one that threatens all Jews, be my guest. But you’ve only allowed yourselves to be drawn into the cycle of global Jewish-Muslim jihadi revenge. And that is a dead end literally in which the bodies of the future Gabriel and Rivka Holtzbergs korbanot will pile like kindling up to the heavens.
My Jewish God is a God of mercy, not a God of vengeance or of hatred. My God wants us all to live in peace even if that is not yet achievable. He doesn’t want a religious Hatfield & McCoys feud that continues till the end of time.
Oh and by the way, would my opponents care to try to interpret the Hebron pogromists’ rampage yesterday, in which they came a hair’s breath away from immolating a Palestinian family of 20 (see Haaretz’s eyewitness report) sheltering in their home, as an act that was not the equivalent of anti-Muslim jihadism? So let’s not have the Jewish pot calling the Muslim kettle black please. I think there is blackness in all our hearts. The question is how to wipe away the stain so we can cleanse our hearts.
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Joachim Martillo, your allegation that a Chabad house might be used by ‘neocon Intelligentsia’ [sic] for a nefarious purpose is in line with the hatred myth motivating the attackers, that there is a ‘US-Zionist’ plot to attack Pakistan. This allegation, which you yourself admit is a product of your imagination, is tantamount to inciting attacks on Chabad. In short, you produced an anti-Semitic libel. Do you think that the internet hasn’t got enough of these?
Silverstein, why do you attack my point about terrorism and then agree with it? Do you argue with yourself? The structure of terrorism and terrorist organisations is very well understood and you don’t need to be in the CIA to know about it. Terrorist foot soldiers are motivated by hate myths about Jews. Don’t feed these myths please. And what are “Jewish terror operatives”? You want to make out Jews are as bad as the terrorists; this isn’t tikun olam. It is God forbid ‘chillul haShem’.
Now regarding the vexed issue of Islamophobia. Richard Silverstein, please review the statement of the Organisation of The Islamic Conference – http://www.oic-oci.org/oicnew/topic_detail.asp?t_id=1666. Regardless of the fact that the OIC is an organisation of islamic states and promotes the interests of those states, please note that the self-image of Islam portrayed here is not one that is compatible with the pejorative use of the word “Jihadi” above. You need to be aware that this usage is
1. in conflict with a normative view of Islam and of Jihad amongst muslims
2. deals insensitively with what may be a cognitive dissonance within Islam which as an outsider you might be well advised to treat with more sensitivity.
Now you may just respond to this by telling me that I am an idiot and don’t know what I am talking about; frankly that’s not of any interest and I’m not going to get into some discussion about my experience of interfaith etc. I just hope that you take the point on board and it enables you to find a better way to write about this subject in the future.
I find the whole brouhaha about whether the attack was “anti-Semitic” of “anti-Israeli” totally unnecessary. Basically, it seems to me, Stein vs Silverstein disagreement is a problem of terminology, not of real difference of opinion.
What does it mean that the attack was “anti-Semitic”, Alex? Does it mean, as Joachim aptly notes above, that the Mumbai terrorists subscribed to the “so-called traditional Judeophobia”? Of course not! To believe that Mumbai terrorists hated Jews for the same reasons as people in Europe did for centuries (and these were manifold) is totally absurd. Of course association of Jews with Israel was the core of their anti-Semitism. The reason it can still be called “anti-Semitism” (a term arguably inaccurate but too ingrained by now) is that their did not differentiate in their hate between Jews, i.e., their hostility was to all Jews, not necessarily connected to Israel in any way.
So, if Alex tries to score points by connecting the Mumbai attacks to some sort of “clash of civilizations” notion, then he is wrong: without the Israel-Palestinian conflict, any reasonable person would agree that the terrorists would never have thought of attacking a Jewish target. On the other hand, it is only natural, apparently, to be hostile to entire groups of people by association, in which case we do have to admit that there exists a new form of anti-Semitism in the world today, and this is primarily inspired by the Israeli-Palestinian (and Israeli-Arab) conflict.
And, of course, as Richard and other great souls in the the truely progressive Jewish blogosphere tirelessly document, the same conflict gave birth to no less vile phenomenon of anti-Arabism and Islamophobia amoung Jews.
Peter D – Good points. I’d moderate what you said slightly by stating that wihtout Israel they might not have thought of attacking a Jewish target. You are right in saying that they weren’t motivated by classically European forms of anti-Semitism, but I don’t know how that helps us. Once they’ve made the decision to attack a solely Jewish target, th they’ve crossed another red line. I don’t agree that hostility to people by association is inevitable, either, and in that regard I’d refer you to the African-shooting Mugabe hater hypothesised somewhere over here or on CIF. I’m neither trying to score points nor trying to talk about a clash of civilisations; I’m not interested in the former and I don’t believe in the existence of the latter. If Mumbai (and indeed Hebron) do show us one thing, it’s the spilling over of political violence (which, theoretically, can be dealt with by ‘draining the swamp’) into outright racism (at least in act if not in stated motivation), which can’t necessarily be controlled by recourse to rationalism. It’s also important to note that these ‘great souls’ are happy to (rightly) dismiss anti-Arabism and Islamaphobia as racism, but will constantly explain away anti-Semitism in the Arab world as a mere consequence of Israeli oppression of Palestinians.
Alex, so, we agree on most point. However, I never thought much of your Mugabe analogy. It is too far-fetched and I don’t see how it could elucidate anything in this discussion. Are you trying to claim that there is something so special about hatred of Jews that it does not translate into hatred of other ethnicities or races or religions? I don’t see a difference between a Jew killed for being a Jew or an Armenian killed for being an Armenian or a Shiite killed for being a Shiite and so on.
Well, it was never my analogy. In any case, as far-fetched as it may be, if a white person killed Africans and claimed he did it because of Mugabe’s land reform legislation (which primarily targeted white farmers) everyone would still recognise the act to be a racist one. What’s the difference here?
Jew-hate is a form of racism, and Israel-hate is a new manifestation of racism that is related to Jew-hate. What makes Jew-hate distinct from other racisms is its history; muslim extremist Jew-hate/Israel-hate (the two overlap and are often indistinct) has historical roots in european fascism and nationalism. So the ding-dong above about who the murderers hated is not very interesting. To make it simpler for the anti-Zionist sophists: hatred of Israel/Israelis is a form of irrational hatred like other forms of racism and it is an evil and pernicious influence in the world today that is cynically manipulated by nihilists who are pursuing an agenda that is contrary to the interests of progressive societies. The claim that it is distinct from hatred of Jews has often shown to be false; and this distinction is irrelevant. Unless you believe that some Jews deserve to die because of who they are (bad Jews). Which makes you a bad homo sapiens.
In my comment I linked to my blog entry Chabad Lubavitch’ Dangerous Game, in which I tried to make it clear that Chabad is involved in a sort of politics and corruption that sends people gunning for the organization. This hostility has no or very little connection to Judaism.
I did not even mention the nursing home scandals of two decades ago. Corruption and vicious politics have characterized Chabad for a long time.
Alex, maybe. Again, the situation is such a hypothetical one that I right now can’t find the mental resource to care one way or another. So, suppose we agree that Mumbai terrorists were anti-Semites, racists, whatever. How does that change anything? Same question to you, Richard. So what if their hatred of Jews is inspired by Israel’s actions? Should we be scoring any point from that? I mean, the same Israel’s actions are wrong regardless of whether some lunatics decide to kill people “because of them”, just as these killings are indefensible regardless of whatever twisted motivation.
Well – for one thing, it means that we can’t just solve the problem of Islamic terrorism by solving Israel-Palestine (although obviously we should endeavour to solve that in any case, regardless of the externals).
I don’t remember reading Richard saying we will “solve the problem of Islamic terrorism by solving Israel-Palestine” – if anything, he says – and I concur – is that it (a) will take some of the fuel from the flame and (b) that the phrase “Islamic terrorism” itself is largely a chimera – a convenient image to scare us into believing that Hamas and Mumbai terrorists, for example, are all the same, while in reality each case is to its own, its own unique motivations. You say you don’t subscribe to the notion of the “clash of civilizations” but the catch-all phrase of “Islamic terrorism” comes from basically the same book.
Finally, I reject the notion that we need to “solve Israel-Palestine” in order to solve anything but the abomination of the situation in Israel-Palestine itself. (It is like saying that we need to fight poverty so that poor people have less motivation to steal and not because poverty is a bad thing in itself.) All the rest is distraction, equivocation, rationalization etc.
You argue that solving Israel-Palestine will take some of the fuel from the flame (I agree), yet you also say you reject the notion that we need to solve Israel-Palestine in order to solve anything “but the abomination of the situation in Israel-Palestine itself.” Which is it?
Just because I use the shorthand Islamic terrorism, it doesn’t mean I accept that Hamas and Lashkar-e-Taiba, for example, are the same. I’ve never made that claim. But I’d also say it’s naive – as Richard seems to do on some occasions – to reduce Hamas to a movements with purely political demands, or demands that have only been forged in the fires of a nationalist conflict. Again, no doubt Israel bears some responsibility for all this, but that doesn’t alter its current reality, nor does it make Israel the only party capable of dealing with it now.
Re: your first point, I’ll clarify: “taking fuel from the flame” would be a nice side-effect but should never be the primary motivation in this case. That’s what I meant.
Re: your second point, I don’t think RS would argue with that either. Nor would I. But while we have little influence on Palestinian internal politics, our main influence and responsibility lies with our own and that’s why RS doesn’t spend hours promoting peaceful ideas on Islamist forums or whatever.
@J.R.: I agree with yr GENERAL comments about terror. But you are completely & unsurprisingly myopic in refusing to concede that Jews can be & are terrorists as well. This in effect cancels any insight you might have into the general issues surrounding terror.
I deeply resent your calling my naming of Jews as terrorist as hillul hashem & if you use that term again in this context you will no longer be welcome here. That is a deeply hateful calumny against me. Jews are terrorists. Not all Jews. But some are. Yr refusal to acknowledge this renders you a rather pathetic apologist rather than a dispassionate observer of terror.
@J.R.: Really, this is beyond stupid. You found one Muslim source which purports to support yr notion that jihad cannot be used in Islam to denote physical struggle. Big deal. I can point to 20 that confirm my interpretation. What does this prove?
This argument over the meaning of jihad is over. Get off this topic. Any further posting on this will not be published.
@J.R.: Typically, you’ll see that J.R. is obsessed by Jew-hatred, but has no awareness or acknowledgement that Jews & Israelis are no less infected with this disease. And to say it is irrational is foolish. It may appear pathological or insane or whatever. But it has a basis in reality. There are concrete, real ways to diminish such hatred which I’ve mentioned repetitively here. I am not in any way justifying terror or hatred. But there are rational ways of draining the swamp so that the infestation will end.
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