April 15, 2013

Arab-Jewish perspective on Zionist Antisemitism

Here's David Shasha in the Huffington Post with an article titled What Israel Means to Me.  In the piece he alludes to Israeli scholar Oz Almog and quotes the following chunk from his book, The Sabra:The Creation of the New Jew:
The Zionists greatly admired the physical beauty of the native, the "Jewish Gentile" who had been anointed king of the new Israel, and they contrasted him with the ostensible ugliness of the Diaspora Jew [...]. Writers of this era [...] described the native as a robust youth with "gentile" characteristics, a kind of Jewish muzhik, or Russian peasant -- strapping, self-confident, and strong-spirited, as opposed to the stereotypical Diaspora Jew, who was pale, servile, and cowardly.

Especially prominent in descriptions of the native are his masculine vitality and health and his alienation from Judaism. The criteria are European-Christian ones, which have their source in ancient Greece and Rome [...].
This "normalisation" of Jews presupposes of course that Jews are not normal and that the European Christian man or woman of action is the norm. This tells us a lot, as David in his article explains, about zionist racism generally but it also shines a light on an under-reported issue of antisemitism (as in anti-Jewish racism) intrinsic to zionist ideology and the zionist project.



Here's what it says on HuffPo about David Shasha:
David Shasha is the director of the Center for Sephardic Heritage in Brooklyn, New York. The Center publishes the weekly e-mail newsletter Sephardic Heritage Update as well as promoting lectures and cultural events. His articles have been published inTikkun magazine, The American Muslim, the Christian Progressive and other publications. To sign up for the newsletter visit the Sephardic Heritage Google Group at http://groups.google.com/group/Davidshasha
The newsletter is always a good read.

No comments:

Post a Comment