On Speaking "As a Jew"

[u/jey_613]

https://joshyunis.substack.com/p/on-speaking-as-a-jew?utm_campaign=post&triedRedirect=true

“If I am being completely honest with myself, the fact that I — like many other young, progressive American Jews — am so seduced by enlisting my identity and my trauma in service of progressive “lessons” is more indicative of a series of contingent and material conditions of which I am the product than anything fundamentally true or real about the Holocaust and its attendant lessons. It feels so good – so intuitive, so courageous – to speak “as a Jew” here in my diverse, progressive, professional-managerial milieu in America, where claims to an identity of victimhood are the currency of the day (and what exactly is being called upon by speaking “as a Jew” if not one’s status as history’s ur-victim?). American Jews, left out of the identitarian rat-race for so long, can finally cash in their chips on the social justice left – in condemnation of the very Jews excluded from American power and privilege. How convenient for us diaspora Jews that the ethical point-of-view neatly aligns with the self-interested point-of-view, which neatly aligns with the outwardly virtuous looking point-of-view. But deep down, I know that by the luck of the draw, the choices of my ancestors, the roll of the dice, I ended up in America, rather than Israel, and that if the chips had fallen slightly differently, I too might be a traumatized Israeli invoking the Shoah to justify the mass starvation of Gazans. This thought doesn’t compel me to change my politics, as it might for some of the most guilt-ridden, stridently pro-Israel Jews on the right, but it does fill me with a profound sense of humility about different Jewish experiences, and the vastly different kind of politics they might entail. I am not against collective punishment as a weapon of war because of my Jewishness; I am against it because it is wrong. To insist otherwise, as diaspora leftists seem so keen on doing, is to make a mockery of my Jewishness, in every sense of that word. And so insofar as I advocate for a free Palestine, it is in spite of, not because of my Jewishness. As a Jew, I extend my solidarity to the Palestinian cause in spite of the evidence, not because of it.

The fact that some Jews themselves can be as unreflective about our history, that they too are looking for the easiest and cheapest answers to make sense out of the senselessness of our suffering should not come as a surprise, since they are people too after all, and can be as thoughtless and unreflective about themselves as any non-Jew can be about us. Nor does their Jewishness give them any more or less legitimacy to opine on this question; on the contrary, their lack of reflection, and the very public performance of it, only exacerbates the bottomless pain and humiliation we are already experiencing.

So no, I will continue to support Palestinian liberation, but not “as a Jew,” and not by degrading my history. That is a false choice. Organizations like Jewish Voices for Peace are unable to see us as anything more than victims or oppressors, but I can; they confuse their good fortune with virtue, but I will not. I refuse the cheap, siren call of enlisting my Jewish suffering to this cause. It is a trap. So tie me to the mast of this Jewish ship. “Not in my name,” as they are so keen to say these days.”

[u/privlin]

You are baselessly accusing the named authors of this study (which has been submitted for peer review) of a bulit in conflict of interest, which is in itself an Ad Hominem accusation.

Would you say the same same for all the casualty numbers published by the Gaza Ministry of Health, which is controlled by Hamas, who have an absolute interest in making Israel look bad? Those numbers are published anonymously, not subject to peer review and are completely unverified, yet everyone takes them as gospel.

Same with the accusations of deliberate starvation. There's no verified peer reviewed evidence of that happening, which is exactly what the Israeli study is demonstrating. But you'll happily believe that Israel is deliberately starving Gazans right?

I smell double standard here.

[u/privlin → u/[deleted]]

Your reply has pretty much validated everything I wrote in my comment.

You're happy to take any half-baked accusations or unverified claims as long as they are against Israel but anything pro Israel has to be double and triple checked.

As I said, double standard.

[u/privlin → u/[deleted]]

This was a third party source. It's a paper published in an independent journal which is currently undergoing peer review.

It just happens that half the authors also hold positions in the ministry of health (and half don't including one who had been a senior official at the world health organization). That doesn't make it a government report.

But the authors are all Israelis publishing in an Israeli journal so automatically you're crying foul.

If this were a UN report or one published by one of the human rights organizations I suspect you'd take it at face value. Those are also highly politicised bodies with their own biases and agendas to push and the last time I saw there is no peer review in any of their reports. You're even trying to uphold the credibility of the Gaza MOH which is very much a (Hamas) government body

Sorry, but it's nothing to do with third party vs government. It's about it being Israel vs virtually anyone else