#JewishandProud

Someone in the American Jewish Committee (AJC)must have recently watched the old Annie get Your Gun movie with Irving Berlin’s famous Anything you can do, I can do better.  Why should – they must have thought – only Gays have all the fun, with their colourful Gay pride marches. And so, they announced a Jewish Pride Day. For some reason, they chose the 6^th of January – Epiphany – for it.

I don’t know whether AJC organised carnivalesque floats, with young or not so young men demonstrating the binding of tefillin, extravagantly dressed orthodox Jews showing off their kaftans, yarmulkes  and tallit prayer shawls (they might have gone for the rainbow coloured one, to show commonality with the other “others”.  

I have no objection to parties, not even to street parties. It is the concept of pride that I question. The AJC’s website explains “We will win not by guarding our identity, but by celebrating it. We will win not by hiding who we are, but by trumpeting it, and by being embraced by our friends in other communities.” I agree about not hiding. I just don’t like the ‘pride’ concept.

According to the Oxford dictionary pride is “a feeling of elation or satisfaction at achievements or qualities or possessions etc. that do one credit”. I am not quite sure which achievements, qualities or possessions, the AJC believe we are to be proud of. The other meaning of pride, the Oxford dictionary offers is “high or overbearing opinion of one’s worth or importance”. I cannot imagine that we would like to suggest that we are afflicted with this condition. That leaves a pride of lions...  

Germany and its warped Relationship with the Jews

Nothing seems to have changed. Only the direction of its pathological warpedness. A recent decision of Germany’s parliament is a point in case: In its immense wisdom, the Bundestag decided to define BDS as antisemitic. BDS is a Palestinian civil society movement calling for unarmed actions, such as boycott, divestment and sanctions, to fight Israeli occupation.

BDS – perhaps deliberately – is an unclear entity, some believe that it calls for the State of Israel to cease to exist, others that it aims for a departure of Israel from those areas it conquered in 1967 and has been occupying since and in which it has settled more than 600,000 of its own (Jewish) citizens. I doubt not that there are many Arabs who would prefer for Israel not to exist – a wish that I do not share. I do, however, share the wish for Israel to get out of the occupied West Bank. One may not share the demand, but there is nothing antisemitic about the demand to penalise Israel for the occupation. Let a thousand Bundestags repeat the folly: it can also decide that the earth is flat or that it was created by God in six days, 5779 years ago.

Whatever BDS’ aim may be, they do not try to achieve it by with armed violence. Instead, they try to get Israel boycotted into submission. An effort which has up to now, not been very successful. The Israeli government, however, has been panicking about BDS and together with several Jewish lobby organisations is bullying whoever they can into delegitimizing BDS. The instrument used to vilify BDS is one frequently used by Israel to shut up critics: blaming the critics of Israel or its actions as anti-Semites. What has happened last week in Germany is a spectacular success of the Netanyahu regime. In an obscure joining of souls, Angela Merkel’s CDU has, together with its coalition partner, the SPD (social democrats), joined forces with the ultra-right-wing AfD, in handing this coup to Mr. Netanyahu.

Germany’s political class still operates with a need to show that they atone for the country’s past and in this case, the price is paid by the Palestinians: Germany is helping Israel to eradicate Palestinian civil society’s agitation for their cause.  

The American Jewish Committee (AJC)

Polls show that 80% of Jews in the USA opposed the move of the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, without making significant progress in the peace process. Two countries followed the US decision, Paraguay and Guatemala. Now, Paraguay decided to reverse its decision of four months ago and move its embassy back to Tel Aviv.

The American Jewish Committee (AJC), an American Jewish lobby organisation, came out with “AJC is deeply disappointed by Paraguay's decision to close its recently opened embassy in Jerusalem and return it to Tel Aviv… This diplomatic reversal is shocking,"

AJC yet again proves that it represents only its right-wing funders and not the opinion of American Jewry.