James Edward Johnson

I am always a little surprised by how fast professed anti-racists will engage in antisemitism. I have never experienced this phenomenon to the degree I have experienced it here in Iowa City. Most people here are really good people, but there is a small group of very vocal ideologues who are apparently not deterred in their open acts of antisemitism. Here are a few tips for avoiding antisemitism that I have recently considered:

Conspiracies are rare. Most cooperation is in the open. When I say something I am not speaking for any other Jew – either collectively or individually. When I act I am not acting on any other person’s behalf unless I am explicit in doing so. If you are quick to infer a conspiracy between my and other Jews, your inference is antisemitic. I am always shocked when people assume I am part of a Jewish conspiracy and not simply doing what I think is right on my own and for my own purposes.

Members of minority groups usually are angered when they perceive bigotry directed towards their group. Responses to such perceptions are not typically cautious and reasoned and can often appear spiteful or vindictive. Expecting minorities to suppress their anger and respond more civilly is a bigoted expectation. If a fellow Jew gets pissed off at you for your lack of sensitivity I am not going to try to put a leash on them. I do not infantilize Jews or anyone else by pretending my calmer response is more “proper” or “better” than their angry response. It is not my place to tell them how they should respond to your bigotry. Expecting one Jew to prevent another Jew from expressing their emotion in a visceral fashion is antisemitic. Expecting a male to restrain a female is doubly bigoted because it reinforces sexist stereotypes.

There are many individual members of every group who behave poorly at times. Attributing the actions of those individuals to their group, their community organizations or any other member of that group is a bigoted attribution. Minority communities tend to be well connected internally because of their minority status. That one poorly behaved member of a group might have connections to other members of the group is not evidence of general debasement of the group. It is evidence of the group’s normalcy. Expecting otherwise is destructive of minority groups, bigoted, and in the case of Jews, antisemitic.

More locally, there are a few groups (seemingly attended by the same small set of people) that routinely engage in these sorts of antisemitism. They are ostensibly pro-Palestinian in spite of having very few Palestinian Arab members. In practice, they are a lot more anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, and antisemitic than they are pro-Palestinian. What a shame. Don’t be enticed by the superficially tolerant rhetoric of such groups.

A Film Unfinished is showing now at the Bijou Theater at the University of Iowa.  The Israeli documentary covers the known and lost footage taken by the Nazis of the Warsaw Ghetto.

I saw it last night and it is a very powerful film that makes even those familiar with the Holocaust pause in consideration of the terror of Naziism … well before the Jews were sent to the gas chambers.

Here is a preview:

Go watch it at the Bijou … between now and Thursday.

On Thursday, I went to the Christians United for Israel ‘Night to Honor Israel’ in Davenport. The 2,400 seat Adler Theater was filled nearly to capacity with conservative evangelical Christians. This is not typically my sort of crowd.  Conservative preacher Pastor John Hagee, who is among the best known conservative evangelicals in America, was the keynote speaker.  The crowd was filled with people who have a strict view of a different faith than mine and who have fairly severe differences with me on a wide range of social policies.

And yet, I was warmly welcomed, as a Jew, among these people.  Hagee made clear that his love and support for the Jewish people is not based on any expectation that we convert to Christianity or any other sort of compromise of our beliefs.  The crowd echoed that view.

And so, I wonder, why is it that among the supposedly tolerant and accepting people on the left here in Iowa City, I feel no tolerance; while among the typically less tolerant and conservative Christians, I feel real tolerance … even acceptance?

By way of example, a far-left Democrat from here in Johnson County, told me at the state Democratic Convention that I was a disloyal American and that I should leave and move to Israel.  I feared nothing like that on Thursday evening.  In fact, I experienced the opposite … my Jewish identity was seen as a patriotic expression of my American heritage.  God bless these people for showing me real acceptance.

 

Z-Word over at the AJC comes through in reminding us of the AMIA massacre of Jews in Buenos Aires by Hezbollah 16 years ago today, and giving us an update on the current situation:

Though the AMIA massacre occurred on July 18th, 1994 the official commemoration of its sixteenth anniversary took place on the 16th. In these two stories covering the events that took place you’ll find Guillermo Borger, head of the AMIA community organization. the one directly affected by the attack, praising the “good performance” of the present administration with regard to the investigation into the attack and lauding Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s “bravery” in calling for the extradition of the Iranian fugitives in her speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations.

via Two Theses On The AMIA Massacre at Z-Word Blog.

Here in Iowa City, I have heard several people refer to Hezbollah as “brave”, “freedom fighters”, and other such nonsense.  Such people need to read about the AMIA bombing (that killed 85 and wounded hundreds) and learn that groups like Hezbollah are not simply enemies of Israel.  They are enemies of the Jews and all tolerant people everywhere.

Read the full post at Z-Word.

I am a fan of Robert Satloff’s book, Among the Righteous.  It provides an important opening into a serious discussion of the history of the Jewish experience in Muslim lands.  A booklet promoting such ideas, therefore, is a good idea in my opinion.

However, as Bataween, over at Point of no return points out:

Laudable though this initiative is, one cannot help feeling misgivings. As Lyn Julius wrote in her review of Robert Satloff’s book, Satloff has himself failed to convey a sense of the almost universal tide of sympathy the Arab world felt for the Nazis. Between 150,000 and 300,000 Muslims fought on the side of the Axis. The scholar Jeffrey Herf has researched the huge impact of Nazi propaganda on the mostly illiterate Arab World.

via Point of no return: Booklet on Muslim Holocaust heroes can mislead.

Bataween’s point is well taken.  If you are unfamiliar with this viewpoint, subscribe to Point of no return.  It, more than any other blog, is an excellent resource for understanding oppression and loss suffered by Jews in Muslim lands.

You might ask, “calls a Jew what?” Ok, the title should probably say “former” neo-Nazi skinhead.  ”On the phone” might also be an appropriate addition.

I had asked Frank Meeink, author of Autobiography of a Recovering Skinhead for an interview and today he called me back.  I have already written an as-yet-unpublished straight and simple review of the book for the Iowa City Press-Citizen.  But, the story is compelling.  There is a lot more to this guy and his story than can be included in a 600-word review for a local paper.

I haven’t settled on the exact topic of my next piece, but my talk with him will feature prominently.  It is rare that one gets a chance to talk to someone who was once a hard-core extremist, but who today is making amends.

I’m not going to say a lot about the book or my discussion with Meeink now, other than to say that you should buy the book.  If you are in Iowa City, see him at Prairie Lights on July 13th.

Some excellent observations by Eamonn McDonagh.  Here is an excerpt describing the points he addresses:

Three aspects common to many recent critiques of Israel are present here: Israel is seen as having once been very good and much loved and now to be very bad and widely hated, the person making the critique is Jewish (in this particular case, there’s the added bonus of the fact that Stéphane Hessel, the cited drafter of the Declaration of Human Rights is a Holocaust survivor) and Israel is seen to be heading for catastrophe if it doesn’t change its ways.

via Three Aspects of Criticism of Israel at Z-Word Blog.

My column in today’s Iowa City Press Citizen:

The forgotten refugees …

from Arab lands and their descendants in Iowa City

James Eaves-Johnson
Writers’ Group

The Jewish community in Iowa City is small but unusually diverse. Its synagogue is one of a few affiliated with both the Reform and the Conservative movements in Judaism. While the synagogue in town is traditionally Ashkenazi (Jews more recently from Eastern Europe), a sizeable and active component of the community is Sephardi or Mizrahi (Jews more recently from the Mediterranean and farther east).

Jews from the Middle East and North Africa, in particular, have important and unheard stories to tell. The lack of familiarity with these stories is unfortunate because these Jews have a history that, while less lethal than the history of Ashkenazim during the Holocaust in Europe, is nearly as tragic.

In the past 100 years, Jews in these lands have declined from more than 1 million to near zero.

The Ottoman Empire

Margot Lurie is a Mizrahi Jew. She lives in Iowa City today, attracted here by the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Like many Americans, her background is diverse, but much of her family is from the Middle East. Her grandfather, Elias Levi, was among the first Jews to flee Arab lands in modern times. He was born to a family of Baghdadi Jews that very well may have lived in Mesopotamia for millennia.

At the beginning of the 1900s, the Middle East was changing rapidly. The Turkic Ottoman Empire, which had dominated North Africa, southeastern Europe and southwestern Asia was losing its power and would soon be reduced to Turkey. In World War I, Jews had been a fairly well protected, if subservient, minority in the Ottoman Empire. However, the weakening of the Ottomans degraded this protection.

It was in 1913, when Lurie’s grandfather was a toddler, that her family fled Baghdad. Her great-grandfather was a reserve officer in the Ottoman army and had heard of an anti-Semitic plot against the Jews of Baghdad. Her family fled to the places where they could — Calcutta, India and to Rangoon, Burma (now Myanmar). Her grandfather spent the bulk of his younger years growing up in Burma. While he was in high school, he founded the Rangoon Zionist Society and began writing for various Jewish publications in the Far East. Just prior to World War II, he traveled to the U.S. for religious study. The Japanese invasion of Burma kept him here permanently.

While today we consider Myanmar’s ruling junta to be one of the more repressive regimes on the planet, it was a haven for many Jews fleeing anti-Semitism in Arab lands. By fleeing then, Lurie’s family escaped one of the worst anti-Jewish pogroms in modern history.

Although Baghdad was arguably the most Jewish metropolitan area in the world, it would succumb to a pro-Nazi uprising in 1941. The pogrom following that uprising, the Farhud, would kill more Jews than were killed by the Nazis in the Kristallnacht pogrom.

Morocco’s Jewish population

Coralville resident Moshe Peri was born in Israel to Moroccan parents. He works at Rockwell Collins and moved here to join his wife, who is getting her Ph.D. at the University of Iowa. Until coming to the U.S., Peri’s background was typical of Moroccan Jews.

Morocco, to its credit, is probably the Arab country that has demonstrated the greatest tolerance of the Jews. During World War II, Sultan Mohammed V tried to limit the impact of the Vichy race laws against the Jews. As a result, they fared better than Jews in Tunisia, Algeria and Libya. But in all these countries, thousands of Jews were sent to concentration camps. Some were even deported to Auschwitz. Moreover, the end of the war won Moroccan Jews no reprieve. In 1948, the Jews of Morocco faced anti-Jewish riots and boycotts.

Moshe observes that Moroccan Jews “all shared the same dream to immigrate to Israel.” And so, once Jews could flee to Israel, they did. In 1948, large numbers of Jews began leaving Morocco for Israel. Today, Morocco’s Jewish population stands at less than a tenth of its peak size. Most of those who left have found refuge in Israel.

Dealing with anti-Semitism

As a practical matter, it was Zionism that finally provided refuge to Jews in the Middle East. Jewish populations were consistently treated as foreign and subordinate to the domestic population wherever they went. They had to constantly appeal to the power of local rulers and seek foreign diplomatic protection. Indeed, many Jews of these areas carried European passports and generally identified as members of those European nations more than as members of the Arab countries where they resided.

Unlike Lurie’s family, the Baghdadi Jews who remained through the end of the Ottoman Empire faced this problem acutely as their Ottoman protectors were displaced by the British. In 1918, Baghdadi Jews recognized the precariousness of their situation. The Chief Rabbi expressed to the British that local authorities would be unable or unwilling to protect minority populations and that such conditions contradicted the democratic values of the Allied forces. To remedy this, the Chief Rabbi requested that Baghdadi Jews be given all the rights and duties of British citizenship. Britain would go on to offer limited protection to the Jews but would never meet this request.

Interestingly, Lurie’s grandmother had a parallel experience. She had left German Breslau late in the interwar period to escape rising anti-Semitism there. She arrived in the British Mandate of Palestine to help with the Jewish movement of national liberation — Zionism. While some Jews did fight the British colonial presence there, most knew it would be short-lived and preferred to work with the British while simultaneously pursuing their Zionist goals of statehood.

It was under these circumstances that Lurie’s grandmother joined a women’s auxiliary of the British Royal Air Force and served in Egypt, identifying Nazi planes for the Allies during World War II. Unfortunately, her opportunities were somewhat limited in the RAF. As Lurie notes, “it was tacitly understood that Jews weren’t permitted to occupy important positions.” (Lurie recently published an article on her grandfather’s experiences in “The Boy from Rangoon” in Tablet Magazine at www.tabletmag.com/life-and-religion/19238.)

Jews in Arab lands

Peri’s family had little opportunity for such resistance to the Nazi presence in World War II. Indeed, Jews in Arab lands were generally prohibited from possessing arms for self defense, let alone being allowed to fight in the war. They did, however, have the good fortune of living in Agadir, in southern Morocco. The long reach of the Holocaust would be cut short from reaching his family by the Allied invasion of North Africa in 1942.

The flight of Moshe’s family to Israel would enable him to live a life previously unavailable his family. Before moving to Coralville, Moshe would go on to serve in Shayetet 13 (Israel’s version of the Navy Seals), get an engineering degree and lead the R&D department for an Israeli wireless telecom company. In just one generation, his family would go from being subjugated Moroccan Jews to proud and strong Israeli Jews.

Lurie and Peri have the tremendous benefit of a real transformation away from the experience of their ancestors. Both are proud and outspoken Jews who do not fear standing up for their people. Not all Jews from Arab lands are so lucky.

See original: http://www.press-citizen.com/article/20091206/OPINION01/912060306/1018/OPINION/The-forgotten-refugees-…

There is much irony in the status of American Jews. We are arguably better off than any sizable population of Jews anywhere in the world throughout history. American Jews are nonetheless justifiably defensive. We are defensive because we need not look far to see the fragility of our privilege.

Last week’s news alone illuminated this fragility. On one hand, classical anti-Semitism is alive and well in the world. In Russia, the birthplace of many anti-Semitic tropes, the blood libel reared it ugly head again. In Russia’s third largest city, Novosibirsk, Haaretz reported that dozens of homes were plastered with posters warning, among other things that, “These vermin are still performing rituals, stealing small children and draining their blood to make their sacred bread.” For a long time, such lies served as the basis for waves of anti-Jewish pogroms. For those who are unfamiliar, not only is cannibalism clearly unacceptable in Jewish law, but consuming blood of even kosher animals is prohibited. Most anti-Semitism relies on mixing a small amount of truth into the lies, but this total lie persists even today in places, like Russia, where it is hardly novel.

On the other hand, a newer anti-Semitism is on the rise in Western Europe – largely re-imported by Muslim immigrants. I use the term “re-imported” because classical anti-Semitism was brought to the Arab and Islamic world from Europe in 1840. The blood libel appeared in Damascus in that year and was blended with certainpre -existing anti-Jewish sentiments to form this new anti-Semitism. It was strengthened by the Nazi influence in the region leading up to and during WWII. Today, this new anti-Semitism is coming home to Europe.

This second news story is not about Jews per se. It is about the consequences that have been felt by those involved in the Muhammad cartoon controversy. I connect the two because I have a friend who lives in Denmark, and I know a family that lived in the Netherlands. My friend in Denmark cannot wear a Star of David around her neck because of fear of Islamic violence. The family from the Netherlands came here, in part, out of fear of anti-Semitic violence. The violence stirred by the controversy and the violence felt by those I know is the same thing. It is also the violence that has chasedSalman Rushdie into years of hiding.

The New York Times reports that the cartoonist who made the cartoon with a bomb in Muhammad’s turban, Kurt Westergaard, has been through five safehouses and that a plot to kill him was revealed last month. A man with the same name as the editor who published the cartoons, Flemming Rose, has had to change his name. Ironically,Westergaard has produced cartoons that are arguably far more disrespectful towards Jews and Christians. Even Westergaard admits regret at creating a cartoon that depicted a Palestinian Arab wearing a yellow star – a reference to the yellow stars worn by Jews during the Holocaust. The New York Times details multiple incidents of censorship in Western Europe prompted largely by fear of Islamic violence.

I have no doubt that the European majority hates Arabs and Turks and Muslims far more than they hate Jews. The hatred of Muslims in Europe is unequivocally wrong and indefensible. But, it is the Jews who are leaving out of fear of racist violence – not the Arabs or Turks or Muslims. We may be less hated by the European majority, but we are more at risk of violence because of the hatred that exists against us.

This is why American Jews raise the issue of anti-Semitism in America, sometimes at the risk of appearing overly defensive. We want to raise awareness of the problem before we, like our European (and South American – but that is for another time) family, feel the pressure to leave our homes. It is also why many of us are not sympathetic to those who feel that we allege anti-Semitism unfairly. When I know Jews who cannot wear symbols of their faith because of fear of violence, it is hard for me to take seriously that I am censoring people when I merely raise the possibility that they are encouraging anti-Semitism. Read the New York Times article on the real censorship taking place violently in Europe, and then we can talk about what censorship is and whether Jews are being too defensive.

Shams Ghoneim is a good person. She is sensitive to Jewish concerns in ways that many are not.

During debate on the Johnson County Democratic Platform last weekend, one plank echoed the charge that Jews are not loyal Americans. The plank was shrouded in coded language, likely to mislead innocent observers. However, it was the same kind of Jew-baiting coded language that Nazi-sympathizer Charles Lindbergh and America First used to stir anti-Jewish incitement in the US leading up to WWII. While most who ultimately supported the plank undoubtedly did so innocently, they also did so with a lack of sensitivity towards Jews and the history of anti-Semitism.

Shams, despite obvious peer pressure to the contrary, did a simple thing that demonstrated deep compassion and understanding towards the Jewish people. She refused to support that coded language. She is willing to display, publicly, that she is unwilling to help those who are insensitive to our concerns, even when they are superficially “on her side.”

Shams and I have serious disagreements. But, she can set aside those disagreements and make difficult choices when necessary. She is an asset to the Iowa City community, the Muslim community, and the Arab community. She may not be a member of the Jewish community, but because of her courage, she is an asset to our community as well.

Postscript: The foregoing is a letter I wrote that was published in the Iowa City Press-Citizen today. My initial submission did not explain the details of last weekend’s Johnson County Democratic Convention and much of the second paragraph was omitted. It is not my desire to unfairly criticize the Johnson County Democratic Party. I am already exchanging e-mails with those who I feel were most responsible for this troubling language, and I hope we can reconcile our differences. I also want to note that there were a couple people who spoke for “our side” on this issue Saturday. They were not Jewish and, prior to Saturday, were not known to “our side.” They were moved by our concerns to speak in our favor. They represent what I think of when I think of Democrats generally. I was worried that I might have written something very different coming out of the platform debate. People like Shams, and these other gentiles who care about our sensitivities, preserved the integrity of the local Democratic Party and acted in a manner consistent with historic Democratic interests in diversity and sensitivity towards minority populations.