"It's a wonder I haven't abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart."

Israeli Hypocrisy and the Immigrant Experience

So, there was a story about an immigration crackdown in a mostly African immigrant neighbourhood in Tel Aviv this past week. I’ve sat on this news for a while mostly because I was too chickenshit to say anything about it and also because it depresses me. Last night my friend (who is also half Moroccan Jew like me) told me a story about how his mother, growing up in Israel, would eat apple cores out of trashcans because she was hungry and her family too poor to afford proper meals. I was incensed and felt the call to write something

In the United States, we Americanized Jews are fed this idea of Israel as this egalitarian safe space where all are welcome and we are with our “people”. The irony is this is wholly untrue, especially for those who are not European Jews or residents of Israel who are from Africa such as refugees, migrant workers and other similar groups.  I remember a story especially, back in 2010 where Ashkenazim (European Jews) didn’t want their children studying with Sephardim (North-African, Middle Eastern, Arab, Persian Jews etc) and were taking their kids out of schools. Segregation is illegal in Israel.

Recently, the anti-African hatred in Israel has grown to disgusting proportions and really highlights a gigantic disconnect between rich European Jews and their poor African neighbours while mirroring the Sephardic/Mizrahi experience in Israel for generations (though perhaps not to the extreme of current oppression): There have been numerous race riots where Africans are targeted, the police have been racially profiling migrant workers, Israel is building a detention centre for African migrants, sex-trafficking victims from Sudan and Ethiopia were put in a jail because shelter space was limited, but perhaps most chilling was the cheering of police as they hunted down Sudanese on the streets of Eliat.

I am the child of generations of Iberian-Sephardic Jews who made their home in Morocco after the racist Catholic monarchy expelled them in 1492 (same year they started conquering the “New” World, by the way). I am the child of Moroccans that survived the Holocaust because the King of Morocco refused to bow to the colonial Vichy regime’s Nazi policies. I was not born to sit here and be quiet while injustice is meted out by a powerful few.  A writer for Haaretz, Sarah Kreimer put it well: “What would my grandfather say about migrant workers? We owe it to ourselves – as a society that understands what it means to be refugees – to treat them with basic human decency and respect.”

What is happening in Israel right now is wrong, very wrong. It is contrary to the teachings of our people. Palestinians are being pushed out of their homes and murdered in the streets, African refugees are being treated like criminals, land is being occupied, bombs are blowing up Jewish children in the name of G-d, drones and missiles are ripping apart communities. It must stop. I am only one voice, but I am raising it up.

I dedicate this article to my grandmother.

A Bit of Perspective: My Response to Memorial Day Patriotism

Yesterday, I got into a very frustrating argument on a gay social-networking site on the validity of supporting war and supporting Memorial Day. Despite that I have relative and friends who have served in the American Armed Forces, I do not support war ideologically or spiritually and I am a vocal anti-war advocate, especially when it comes to celebrating memorials of war. I think that remembering and honouring the dead is fine, but there are no national holidays for remembering war victims, only people who fight in wars. 

My frustration with patriotism especially comes from this, I had many people on the website calling me names and saying I was disgusting for not respecting the dead. I have respect for the dead. I do not respect the war they fought in. I refuse to memorialize war. Patriotism goes hand-in-hand with white patriarchy and heterosexism in the United States. People who are seen as unpatriotic for their dissent are labelled traitors. Apparently I am a traitor. Despite this, I still firmly believe that peace is patriotic, and dissent is also patriotic.

One man tried to end the conversation by accusing me of “not caring about the deaths of hundreds of Chinese and Jews”. I assume this person does not know I am Jewish. It enrages me as a Jewish man when White Christocentric Americans use the Holocaust as a justification for war. The United States not only took its time when coming to the rescue of Europe’s Jewry, but it also sent back boatloads of Jewish refugees when they came seeking asylum. It is insulting to victims of the Holocaust and other genocides to use their suffering as a justification for war. Where is America’s Memorial Day for Yom ha-Shoah, where is America’s Memorial Day for the Nanking Massacre? It is also insulting to use genocide as an example to insult people with differing opinions from yourself…especially when espousing how WW2 was justified by saving the Jewish people but conveniently forgetting the slaughter of close to a million Japanese civilians in the American bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

Another point that I want to emphasize is that the people calling me out, one self-described Libertarian even calling me a fool, were all White biological men. I believe that their sexual orientation is irrelevant in this case. Your sexuality or gender identity does not excuse White privilege. All these men have the privilege of occupying the upper echelons of our society especially as White men who have been to college. Education is a privilege and they used their privilege in an attempt to silence me. With this privilege comes power, and it is men like them who continue to perpetuate the interlocking systems of oppression in our society that hold women, people of colour and GLBTQ persons hostage. War and patriotism perpetuate these systems of oppression and I find it sadly ironic that these gay men continue to support them, erstwhile preventing true liberation.

(Ed. Note: I am currently reading Elizabeth Ammon’s Brave New Words: How Literature Will Save the Planet. She underlines how liberalism and academia have failed social justice. This, combined with White privilege in writing history from a White perspective and the privilege of succeeding as White people in higher education also fail social justice. I encourage you to read her book.)