Updated 4/8/2012
When a Jewish or Jewish-identifying American says something harsh about the Likud party and its coalition, as happens fairly often to me,* she or he runs a risk of being attacked as anti-Semitic or a self-hating Jew, as if Binyamin Netanyahu somehow represented all of suffering Jewry and to criticize him were equivalent to accepting the Blood Libel.
To the contrary, the reason so many leftish JOJIAs get so upset about Bad Israelis like Netanyahu that they appear instead to be identifying with Palestinians is that Bad Israelis misrepresent Jewry in a way that brings shame on the race; they are a shande far de goyim, a scandal seen by the gentiles.** I think of Netanyahu as a gangster cousin whose parents should have [jump]
*I'm only patrilineally Jewish--Jewish enough, as you might say, for Hitler, not for Chabad.
**That's far corresponding to German vor meaning "in front of", not fur corresponding to für.
reined him in before it was too late, and I'll tell them so even if outsiders are watching. And I don't think he's really Jewish in a certain ethical sense.
I started intending to mention this way back in 2011, with reference to a discussion by Ta-Nehisi Coates that started with quarterbacks but devolved into a very broad question about what you might call ethnic embarrassment: Coates wondering whether it was OK for him to be publicly (i.e., in front of a multiethnic public) ashamed as a black person by the antics of Herman Cain or the vices of Jayson Blair, and his commenting crew extending it outwards to include the Italian-American, the Irish-American, and so on.
It may not surprise you to hear that nobody mentioned the goyim themselves, Anglos or Wasps or the Race that Dare Not Speak Its Name, in this context--in that community, I think, such emotions are only for the upper classes and are "not in front of the servants, dear." This has to do with a kind of reversed polarity of the axis between rudeness and politeness. Where most people, Chinese or Jews or what have you, take pride in being at their most quarrelsome and obnoxious in the bosom of the family while behaving toward strangers with the most generous courtesy, goyim are exquisitely polite to their nearest and dearest and then break the waiter's finger.
Incidentally--Google does these things!--there turns out to be a connection between John Castle, the elderly Palm Beach private equity monster who broke the waiter's finger, and the rest of this post: his business partner, Len Harlan, is married to Fleur Cates, who in turn was married to Binyamin Netanyahu from 1981 to 1984, while he was deputy chief at the US embassy, in Washington--they split up when he moved on to the UN, as if they couldn't survive outside DC.
Maybe Netanyahu really, in this way, belongs to a kind of post-ethnicity, that of the 1%. He's still the Wicked Son as far as I'm concerned, though. I'll try to get serious about it some other time.
The picture looks as if Musorgsky is supposed to be Samuel Goldenberg and the pianist Sergio Tiempo is the Shmuyle.
Update
A lot of people have suddenly started looking at this post (as of 4/8—Happy Passover and Easter!), and I'd like to call attention to the fact that the serious part of the argument is followed up here, if you're interested.
 |
| The four sons: "the wise, the wicked, the simple, and the one who doesn't know how to ask... the question" From Point of No Return. |
When a Jewish or Jewish-identifying American says something harsh about the Likud party and its coalition, as happens fairly often to me,* she or he runs a risk of being attacked as anti-Semitic or a self-hating Jew, as if Binyamin Netanyahu somehow represented all of suffering Jewry and to criticize him were equivalent to accepting the Blood Libel.
To the contrary, the reason so many leftish JOJIAs get so upset about Bad Israelis like Netanyahu that they appear instead to be identifying with Palestinians is that Bad Israelis misrepresent Jewry in a way that brings shame on the race; they are a shande far de goyim, a scandal seen by the gentiles.** I think of Netanyahu as a gangster cousin whose parents should have [jump]
*I'm only patrilineally Jewish--Jewish enough, as you might say, for Hitler, not for Chabad.
**That's far corresponding to German vor meaning "in front of", not fur corresponding to für.
reined him in before it was too late, and I'll tell them so even if outsiders are watching. And I don't think he's really Jewish in a certain ethical sense.
I started intending to mention this way back in 2011, with reference to a discussion by Ta-Nehisi Coates that started with quarterbacks but devolved into a very broad question about what you might call ethnic embarrassment: Coates wondering whether it was OK for him to be publicly (i.e., in front of a multiethnic public) ashamed as a black person by the antics of Herman Cain or the vices of Jayson Blair, and his commenting crew extending it outwards to include the Italian-American, the Irish-American, and so on.
It may not surprise you to hear that nobody mentioned the goyim themselves, Anglos or Wasps or the Race that Dare Not Speak Its Name, in this context--in that community, I think, such emotions are only for the upper classes and are "not in front of the servants, dear." This has to do with a kind of reversed polarity of the axis between rudeness and politeness. Where most people, Chinese or Jews or what have you, take pride in being at their most quarrelsome and obnoxious in the bosom of the family while behaving toward strangers with the most generous courtesy, goyim are exquisitely polite to their nearest and dearest and then break the waiter's finger.
Incidentally--Google does these things!--there turns out to be a connection between John Castle, the elderly Palm Beach private equity monster who broke the waiter's finger, and the rest of this post: his business partner, Len Harlan, is married to Fleur Cates, who in turn was married to Binyamin Netanyahu from 1981 to 1984, while he was deputy chief at the US embassy, in Washington--they split up when he moved on to the UN, as if they couldn't survive outside DC.
Maybe Netanyahu really, in this way, belongs to a kind of post-ethnicity, that of the 1%. He's still the Wicked Son as far as I'm concerned, though. I'll try to get serious about it some other time.
Update
A lot of people have suddenly started looking at this post (as of 4/8—Happy Passover and Easter!), and I'd like to call attention to the fact that the serious part of the argument is followed up here, if you're interested.
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