Judaism Jim but not as we knew it

This is getting totally weird.  First we had the spectacle of the Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, lying about the origins and status of the modern ideology of Zionism within Judaism, now we've got an antisemitism watchdog reinventing Judaism too.  I thought one of the most famous of the Jewish high holy days was Yom Kippur.  I also thought that Yom Kippur was a fast and that everyone knew it, even non-Jews.  Well now it turns out that Yom Kippur is a festival and has been since as far back as 1948. See this from Dave Rich's book, The Left's Jewish Problem:

Well I'm not aware the left has a Jewish problem but the right definitely has a Judaism problem.

Zionist Antisemitism and the Reinvention of Judaism in Home Affairs Select Committee Report

I just had another look at the Home Affairs Select Committee Report on Antisemitism report.  It makes for such depressing reading I can only take in little looks at a time.  I was just looking at what I thought was the Chief Rabbi's contribution and I was struck by the casual way his evidence was used, it was gleaned from something he wrote for the Daily Telegraph.  I was also struck by his sheer dishonesty though Lord Sacks was a hard act to follow where dishonesty was concerned.

See this:

In an article for The Daily Telegraph in May, the Chief Rabbi criticised attempts by Labour members and activists to separate Zionism from Judaism as a faith, arguing that their claims are “fictional”. In evidence to us, he stressed that “Zionism has been an integral part of Judaism from the dawn of our faith”. He stated that “spelling out the right of the Jewish people to live within secure borders with self-determination in their own country, which they had been absent from for 2,000 years—that is what Zionism is”. His view was that “If you are an anti-Zionist, you are anti everything I have just mentioned”

That's utterly absurd. If Zionism goes to the "dawn of our faith" what happened between the destruction of the second temple and the rise of the Zionist movement in the late 1890s?  There were Zionistic ideas around before then but they tended to lead to the excommunication and even execution of their promoters.

Another question is, so what?   Even if Judaism does demand a Jewish supremacist state based on colonial settlement and ethnic cleansing, why should anyone else accept that?  The Chief Rabbi's sheer dishonesty or ignorance about the history and tenets of his own religion gives you some idea of why the Haredim (ultra-orthodox Jews) were excluded from the HASC's process.  If Satmar Jews were called upon they would say, as they often do, that "Zionism and Judaism are diametrically opposed".  Even the now Kahanist inclined Lubavitch would have to admit that they only became Zionist when the Jewish state moved from being an issue to a fact in 1948. Not the "dawn of our faith" then.

Moving on from the exclusion of the wrong kind of Jews I saw this:

Similarly, CST and the JLC describe Zionism as “an ideological belief in the authenticity of Jewish peoplehood and that the Jewish people have the right to a state”. Sir Mick Davis, Chairman of the JLC, told us that criticising Zionism is the same as antisemitism, because:

Zionism is so totally identified with how the Jew thinks of himself, and is so associated with the right of the Jewish people to have their own country and to have self-determination within that country, that if you attack Zionism, you attack the very fundamentals of how the Jews believe in themselves.

Neither CST nor the JLC are essentially religious so they had to admit that Zionism is an ideology not a religious tenet or religion in its own right but look at how Sir Mick Davis expressed himself:

Zionism is so totally identified with how the Jew thinks of himself

"How the Jew thinks of himself"?  Leaving aside that for Davis, the Jew is a "him", it looks like an extract from a Nazi tract.  Do Zionists know what they're messing with?  And to think they cry when you call them racist.  The Jew, the Jews, Zionism, Israel are all the same to them.  The individual, the race, the ideology, the state, and for the Zionists that is in reverse order of importance to them.

They're riding a tiger and they don't seem to know it.

God's gift to Aryans?

I'm indebted to Mike Marqusee for drawing attention to this outrageously racist diatribe from the UK's newish Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis.  Mike found it in Jewish News:

In his opening commentary to the Torah, Rashi brings a rabbinic tradition stating that the reason the Torah commences with details of creation is to emphasise that as creator of the world, it is in God’s gift to determine which lands belong to which people. In this context, Israel is the eternal home and God-given land of the Jewish people.

So what was God's gift to Aryans?  The Third Reich?

Why bark when you have two dogs?

This is a Steve Bell cartoon from The Guardian. The picture appears to be saying that William Hague and Tony Blair are saying exactly what Netanyahu is saying even though Israel's latest assault on Gaza seems to be a typical Israeli election stunt.  But for Telegraph hasbara blogger, Brendan O'Neill, it is saying that "Jews [are] still running the world".

Elsewhere in the Telegraph there's a report on how the BBC apologised to Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, for catching him on the back foot with a question about Gaza.

Lord Sacks sighed, before replying: “I think it has got to do with Iran, actually.” Mr Davis’s co-presenter, Sarah Montague, was clearly concerned that Lord Sacks did not seem to know his remarks were still being broadcast and could be heard to whisper: “We, we’re live.”

Lord Sacks then swiftly adopted a more formal broadcasting manner and suggested the crisis demanded “a continued prayer for peace, not only in Gaza but for the whole region”.

“No-one gains from violence. Not the Palestinians, not the Israelis. This is an issue here where we must all pray for peace and work for it,” he said.

Mr Davis thanked his guest and announced that the programme would “move on” to the next item.

In a statement the BBC apologised for catching the Chief Rabbi off-guard.

A spokesman said: “The Chief Rabbi hadn’t realised he was still on-air and as soon as this became apparent, we interjected. Evan likes to be spontaneous with guests but he accepts that in this case it was inappropriate and he has apologised to Lord Sacks. The BBC would reiterate that apology.”

Hard to see what there was to apologise for here except that, when he thought he was off air, the Chief Rabbi responded like a politician and when he knew he was on air he returned to religion mode. Anyway, perhaps I should change the headline above to "why bark when you have three dogs?"

UPDATE at 5:20 am 9/12/2012: I just had an interesting chat with a chap called Dave Zeglen on the Fat Man on a Keyboard blog where he (Dave Zeglen) says why he thinks the Steve Bell cartoon is antisemitic:

Levi9909,

I don't think criticism of Israel is a priori anti-Semitic, and I also accept that there are certainly some people who respond to legitimate criticism of Israel with the charge that the accuser is being anti-Semitic. However, in this particular case of Steve Bell's cartoon, it is an anti-Semitic cartoon because it invokes an anti-Semitic stereotype for a man who is Jewish. Even if Steve Bell did not intend the cartoon to be racist, the symbolism is clearly racist given how the trope of the Jewish puppet master has been historically used to marginalize Jewish people. Netanyahu should rightly be criticized, but this was not the way to do it. Bell defended his cartoon with the same argument you put forward, that because it depicts a specific individual at a specific moment, it isn't anti-Semitic, but how can you ignore the fact that the person depicted is also a Jew? It's not the same when you invoke a puppeteer trope for a leader who isn't Jewish because there may not be that historical association with a non-Jewish leader. As a corollary, it might be acceptable to draw George W. Bush as a monkey to mock his incompetence, but it would surely be racist to do the same with Obama because of the historical use of such imagery regarding black people, right?

I did respond but I don't want to be ungracious by giving myself the last word here. If you want to see my response, go there. Ta.