Month: May 2019

I have been having a heated discussion on Facebook over the demonstrations by Hasidim against the Eurovision Song Contest being performed on the Sabbath in Israel.   My view has always been that if you visit a country you abide by the laws and customs.  Pending the Eurovision event, the criticism of Israel over its religious laws by the west  has been astounding.

What really prompted the Facebook discussion was a picture of three  women who stripped down to their bras to cause the Hasidim to turn away.  The Hasidim did turn away, from my view,  as a mark of respect. From the view of others, they turned because of religious convention.  Both might be true, however, the point for me was how much respect did the women have for the Hasidim? None!  Moreover, how much respect did they have for themselves?  Modesty not being a popular trait these days!  Anyway, to cut a long story short, the discussion on Facebook turned one about the separation of powers, a discussion, which has turned into outright hatred for any form of religious belief.  Where is the balance? I ask myself. Here is my response.   To the writer of the post on Facebook.

Some time ago I would have agreed with you on the separation of powers, but now (…)??? Take a look at our secular world, where is the morality, where is the care for others? Even our language has changed from prose to outright assault. The more the institutions grow, the more power they have and the more likelihood of corruption and abuse, that applies to religions and secularism. We cannot say one is better than the other!

The argument for democracy against theocracy is skewed. How many wars have been fought in the name of democracy? Further, religion is defined as a belief system, hence atheism is classified as a religion, as is science, by many postmodern theorists. Today, thanks to Derrida we have different ways of examining things, instead of asking what is right and what is wrong with institutions we ask where is each institution right and wrong.

There are many good religious people. The fundamentals of religion are based on goodness. What people do in the name of religion is another issue. There is very little in secularism to unify people the way religious belief does and there is a very basic reason that this. Religion lifts us from the day to day experience in order to look at things from another perspective. The French philosopher Blanchot wrote that in language it is not the words that give the sentence meaning, it is the spaces in between. If we removed all the spaces then what we would have would be a language of confusion; gobbledygook! The same applies to the place of religion in the social order. It gives us space to reflect, to praise and to better evaluate. Religion does not need a figurehead (as in Christianity) to many God, Allah and Adoni are simply the force that created the universe and gave us a space to live within it, all others are prophets and teachers.

Don’t you think if we had more respect for this universal power, we might also have better respect for our planet and all the creatures that live on it? Religion provides hope and we cannot give up on hope.

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Space on Facebook is of course very limited for such a discussion, but I am dismayed at the way so much hatred is being generated against those who have beliefs extending beyond the personal or the political.  We need to believe that a better world is possible, if we don’t what else is there?  Those who condemn religion per se, have not looked closely at the demands of the New Age Movement, which in and of itself, is a religion and a signifier that some kind of transcendent is needed.

  Image: Extinction Rebellion. 

I feel well within my field of experience to write on the topic of revolution because many years ago I called myself a revolutionary.  As part of a youthful cohort of the 1960s anti-war demonstrations I and my fellow demonstrators were all revolutionaries, a name which may have been adopted, not from the struggle, but from the popular Beatles record that alluded to Revolution.

The fact is revolutions give rise to the same power relations that the Capitalist Revolution gave rise to in the first place, the roots of which were sown in the eighteenth century Enlightenment.  The internal logic of capitalism is deeply rooted in modernity and its ideology and the related problems are not just current they are historical.

The trend today, is peaceful protest modelled on the activism of Gandhi and Martin Luther King. The demonstrations however, rarely end in peace.  Gandhi’s demonstrations led to the massacre of 400 innocent Indians by the British who sought revenge for the insurgent sit-ins.   Martin Luther King, had a vision, but it did not calculate the violence carried out against demonstrating black Americans, which escalated and continues to escalate, rather than being curtailed.  Brave leaders are often beguiled by the moments of elation, which seem to far outweigh the human costs. There is a price to pay for protest and while some say these costs are needed for progress, I believe there is a better way.

I am not against peaceful protest we have a democratic right to do so. However, if protesters break the law then they are dismantling the very legal system they need to make the specified changes.   When I trained in passive resistance many years ago, we were taught not to provoke the authorities. When asked to move on we moved on. Of course, people came back the next day and the day after, so on and so forth, but civil obedience and the law actually remained in-tact.  It was called middle class radicalism, because it made a point without tampering with foundations of the socio-judicial system.  Certainly, today those same foundations need to be changed, and they do slowly evolve, but they will not be altered with violent rebellion, on the contrary they are likely to be strengthened by the constant need to justify judicial authority.

I have attended recent protests as an observer and what I have noticed is an increase in violence on both sides.  Protesters aim for peace, but when they refuse to move, it allows the police to use reasonable force to shift them. Here is where the violence begins and it ends with numerous people being arrested. There is no sense to this, it simply works in favour of giving the authorities more weapons and more power to use against protesters.  Further, while most protest groups aim to cover the cost of court appearances and fines, this also reduces the resources of the campaigners.  Many a protest group has been undermined by having resources diminished this way, while others who may have secured government funding, under the democratic principle of having a voice, generally lose it.

As a long-time peace activist, I abhor violence in any form.  Violence is not civilized and cannot be passed off as such.  We have mechanisms for reform, they might be tedious, but there is a better chance of long-term change via the rule of law than from ongoing civil disruption of society.

The campaigners for civil disobedience today are generally focused on Climate Change.  My question here is this, how many campaigners actually work to reduce their carbon footprint when the focus groups are not around?  I would guess many do change their lifestyle and many more do not.  Similarly, research has shown that many people join protests for the connection not the cause.  This is not to say that protesters cannot glean knowledge from other protesters. Nonetheless, ongoing commitment is a hard road to follow.

We live in a mass consumer culture and Climate Change is as much a cultural problem as it is a consumer one.    Changing an embedded culture takes time.   We have little time to make the changes needed and I accept the limits of truly passive action.  It would appear we have two choices. Either, we take responsibility for our own consumption and ethics in relation to the world’s environmental dilemmas or we wait for the entire system to collapse.   A positive result requires commitment from everyone at home and abroad. Small steps like recycling plastics can go a long way if everyone participates and there are many more positive ways to help.  The mass movement has its place, but we all need to take individual responsibility.  Moreover, times are not going to be easy and we need to help others as well.  People matter, we should not be putting them at further risk.

 

 

 

 

My non-Jewish colleagues are often surprised at my defence of the Jewish people and they ask why?  My answer goes beyond my own roots to the medium of scholarship and integrity.  The Jews are much maligned and I believe, unjustly so.

Two comments were made to me this week and I shall call them misunderstandings rather than malicious and derogatory statements.  The first, was that all Jews are fascists. This was no doubt based on the perception that Jews are persecuting the Palestinian people.    I will not go into the arguments relating to the Jewish- Palestine struggle as I have posted these elsewhere. However,  I do take issue with the word “fascist”, which for Jewish people, who have endured so much pain at the hands of fascists, is a painful  and unwarranted insult.  Suffice to say, Israel is a democracy, fascists states are not.

The other issue pertains to the belief that because the Bible mentions the Jews as the Chosen People, Jews themselves think they are above the rest.  Nothing could be further from the truth,  the Chosen People statement has been grossly misinterpreted.  The Jews were given the Torah and more laws than most could hope to abide by,  316 I recollect.   The Jews made it their aim to spread goodness to others because God had been good to them. He liberated them from slavery.  In history,  this liberation is a direct result of the agreement with God. Notwithstanding, this agreement appears to have rendered Jews the victims of an intense jealousy and hatred and I have met many Jews who believe this is because they have sinned and not lived up to the Commandments.   What a sad state of affairs!  We all know the debilitating affects of a perceived failure.   Jews are not the evil people they are made out to be in the rank propaganda and speech hate that prevails such accusations of being fascists and above others.

No nation has ever been hated more for being bestowed with a system of laws and justice than the Jewish nation.    Yet, most Jews continue to give of themselves in ways that few know of or acknowledge because giving is an integral part of being Jewish.  Concomitantly,  in giving to its neighbours, Israel has found itself in a position of having to continually defend its borders against hostilities because any concessions have been treated with contempt by a population whose leaders serve their own interests.    Jews are not hostile to Arabs,  indeed  Israeli Arabs appear to  live better than those in Palestine.

It is public knowledge that some people want to see the end to the Jewish State and, in some cases,  the Jewish people; this is nothing new.  The Jews are survivors and I am sure that irritates some of Israels’ enemies, but those who protest against Israel and the Jews might consider some of the great Jewish minds and creators that have given much to the world.   Jews have achieved in science, medicine, the arts and much more and the world has benefited.

It is a fact that those nations that embrace the Jewish intellect  tend to thrive and they do so because next to God Jews value integrity, learning and giving.   There are good and bad people in every race, nation, group and community, but to single out Jews as fascist and thinking themselves above the rest is anti-Semitic and racist.

I hope I have made my point!