Digging in the dirt

Last night: read Orwell's 1945 essay Antisemitism in Britain. He pointed out that rather than ending irrational and mean-spirited feelings towards Jews, Hitler had just driven those feelings underground: everyone had convinced themselves that they're not an anti-semite, since that would be an irrational thing to be. Orwell suggests we start with the assumption that we do have such feelings, and then try to analyse why. He's right: unless we acknowledge that we're human beings and therefore prone to irrational prejudices, however embarrassing or troubling that might be, we can't get at those prejudices and uproot them.

So here's my turn: reading in nostalgia_lj's journal about the Nazi Google bomb, I found myself balking at the sensible counter-attack of linking to Wikipedia's definition of a Jew, with the aim of bringing it to the top of Google's search results in place of a hate site. Various rationalisations floated to the surface: it's as artificial as the original bomb, I can't get involved in every cause, etc etc. Prompted by Orwell, I dug deeper, and realised that I didn't want people to think I was supporting Israel's bad behaviour.

Thinking back, it's not the first time. When the now famous Hussam Abdo gave himself up rather than blowing himself up, my rage at the pigs who sit on their arses sending children to die in their place exploded - but I didn't comment on it here, because I didn't want people to think I was supporting Israel's bad behaviour.

Admittedly, this is not entirely my fault. Abdo has become a weapon for the other side. Letters to the editor rightly condemn the vicious bastards murdering Israeli citizens and making martyrs of their own children, but are tight-lipped about Israel's human rights abuses and the killing of Palestinian children. This is not a situation in which it's morally possible to choose a side. That's not to make the simplistic argument that "they're just as bad as each other", which is just throwing up one's hands rather than dealing with a difficult issue.

(Obviously this is further complicated for me by the fact I've married into a Jewish family from the US. It would be all too easy to use this as an excuse not to examine any anti-Semitic feelings I might have - "Some of my best family members are Jews" - but that's not good enough. Falling in love with Jon has meant a bit of a crash course; the first time I ever heard of Judaism was in a Captain America comic.)

Crucially, of course, Jews != Israel's bad behaviour. Heck, even Israel != Israel's bad behaviour; these are the decisions of a particular government, lead by a man accused of war crimes and corruption. He no more speaks for all Israelis or all Jews than John Howard speaks for me.

That means I'm free to condemn the bad behaviour of both sides - or, at least, I should be; some people take any criticism of Israel as anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism, and/or an apology for terrorism. I'll just have to risk that; frankly, the nationality or religion of child-killers are several thousand times less important than the fact that they are child-killers. Like Amnesty or Human Rights Watch, I choose to be on the children's side.

And it means I'm free to link to Wikipedia's definition of a Jew. So, as my little brother once memorably wrote in an account of the 1936 Olympics, get off Nazis.

Passover

O that the Everlasting had not flx'd His canon 'gainst soybeans!

Tonight: vege curry, with additional sweet potato soup for Jon and rice for me. (We women of Babylon have no shame.)