Chas Newkey-Burden explains why he blogs in support of Israel:
I grew up in south west London in an area with few Jewish people. I had a couple of Jewish friends at school and some of my parents friends are Jewish, but I can’t say I was particularly exposed to Jewish people or to Israel as a topic. That said my grandmother visited Israel a number of times and my father did too, in the early days of the state. I only learned about these visits relatively recently though.
As I grew into an adult I did start to become quite interested in Jewish culture, history and even the cuisine. I’ve always instinctively liked symbols like the Magen David and the menorah, too. But these were really just background interests of mine. As far as the Middle East conflict goes I suppose I had a typically default feeling of ill-informed pity for the Palestinians and therefore a vague hostility to Israel. Then 9/11 happened and everything changed.
[...]
I have no secret Jewish relatives and my support is not particularly based on religious feelings, though I am very interested in all aspects of Judaism, particularly the stories of the Baal Shem Tov and other parts of the Hasidic and Jewish mystical traditions.
Fair enough.
I also blog in support of Israel from time to time. I’ve never been to Israel. I don’t care about Israel any more than I care about Sweden, or Sri Lanka, or Singapore. I dislike most of the paraphernalia of religion, any religion, including Judaism.
I don’t see what liking Israel has to do with it. You don’t have to like a country before you start objecting to attempts by religious supremacists to destroy it. In some ways, talking about liking Israel, or Jews, or Jewishness, is the inverse of talking about disliking them, the flip side of the coin. I had a conversation with someone recently – this post by Eve Garrard reminded me of it – in which they expressed dislike of Jews. The generalisations were plain silly. “They stick together,” for example. Like Italians? I asked. A friend made a radio programme a couple of years ago about the Chinese community in King’s Lynn, the oldest in the UK and one that’s still sticking together. No, Jews weren’t like Italians or Chinese. I guess they stick together in a characteristically Jewish way, one that’s sort of icky.
Positive generalisations are just as silly. And all this is beside the point. A long tradition of European anti-semitism has chimed with a movement that seeks to destroy Israel for religious reasons, European anti-semitism has fed on Israel’s problems, but European anti-semitism isn’t Israel’s immediate problem. From the Hamas Charter:
The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up.
Israel isn’t under attack because it is Jewish; it’s under attack because it isn’t Muslim. And if Sweden or Sri Lanka or Singapore were in the same position, I’d occasionally blog in their support too.
As for anti-semitism, that particular derangement will be with us long after Israel finds peace with its neighbours.
Agreed. Israel is quite a nasty country, actually, but under the circumstances I can forgive them for it.