James Edward Johnson

I am a fan of the Bielski Brothers – they were Jews who saved about 1,200 Jews while fighting Nazis in the forests of Belarus.  Indeed, my Jewish identity is tied much more to the experiences of the Bielski partisans, the Warsaw Ghetto fighters, and the Jewish partisans in France than to the other experiences of the Holocaust.  When I was young, my mother introduced me to a co-worker of hers who was a Holocaust survivor.  He had fought as a partisan and had silently witnessed the murder of his family.  I was too young to fully understand, but it left an imprint on me.

When the movie about the Bieskis, Defiance, came out in January 2009,  I had already read much about them.  Indeed, I wrote a column for the Iowa City Press-Citizen dealing with the movie, based in part on my earlier reading of the full history.

Now, it seems, my “full history” is not so full.  There is a newly discovered manuscript written by Tuvia Bielski:

The newly discovered manuscript — about 60 hand-written pages longer than the one Duffy used [for his book, The Bielski Brothers], which was 333 pages — had been sitting in YIVO’s archives, untouched, for more than 50 years. It was one of 3,000 Holocaust testimonials held by YIVO, but since the center’s catalogue was not digitized until 2008, it was nearly impossible to find. You would have needed to sort through thousands of documents to stumble upon it.

via Bringing Bielski Memoir To Print – The Jewish Week.

There is only one problem for me … it is written in Yiddish and I don’t know any more Yiddish than what is embedded in American culture.   The article did say the manuscript was digitized, so maybe we can just use Google’s English-Yiddish translator?

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.

My reading list is light on fiction.  But, when I do read fiction, I look for those stories that will enhance my creative thinking around much of the nonfiction that I read.  Recently, I have been reading Daniel Silva’s work, in large part because he draws on a fair amount of knowledge about terrorism and counter-terrorism.  However, my reading has  only touched the larger genre of terrorism/counter-terrorism fiction.

For anyone interested in the genre more broadly, Margot Lurie has an excellent review of three books in the just released Jewish Review of Books.  Not only does she examine the books, but she draws in the connection between them and the real world.  Here is one of her observations:

There are many such stories in the New York Police Department’s 2007 report, “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat.” Its pages are filled with example after example of young men like Shahzad who have embraced, and acted on, a murderous jihadi-Salafi ideology, mostly in a progression whose four stages the NYPD calls pre-radicalization, self-identification, indoctrination, and jihadization. It is a novelistic arc, and it is fitting that several contemporary novelists have taken it up. In doing so, they have given us a new kind of antihero, a ripped-from-the-headlines young man, raised in the West, affluent, smart, idealistic, who works out his salvation through other people’s fear and trembling.

via I, Terrorist > Publications > Jewish Review of Books.

Access to the article is restricted, but if you aren’t a subscriber to JRB, maybe you should be …

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.

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.