Archive for November 2023
…as Jason Lee, that is to say. Full disclosure, I didn’t know Jason Lee was a footballer or that he started his professional career at Charlton Athletic, until David Baddiel became active publicly against antisemitism. Then one absolutely could not miss the back story.
Yesterday and today, a hostile tweeter demands to know my opinion of blackface, as I too may be called a hypocrite for opposing antisemitism, if I do not consider it racist. I tell him I do consider blackface racist but somehow he misses my reply and puts the question again, this morning. So it goes on. Someone calls the person an antisemite, based on his timeline and he replies with a meme showing the late Hajo Meyer, accompanied by a text likening Zionists to Nazis, these being Meyer’s own words.
Hajo Meyer, unfortunately deeply anti Israel in his old age, became a meme and leads a busy posthumous life; likewise Shulamit Aloni who was not anti Israel so much as against the right wing,specifically Ariel Sharon. I wish I had a shekel for every time that I have been sent the Shulamit Aloni meme, this one:
I can’t do better than to insert a link to Steve Cooke’s article, where he explains the background, but it is not intuitively clear to those who know nothing about Jewish history that she was not saying the thing that antisemites believe.
Even more often than the Shulamit Aloni and Hajo Meyer memes, I am sent photos of bestreimeled men from the Neturei Karta cult, burning Israeli flags or – perhaps worse – lining up with Jew haters to make the threatening quenelle gesture. I am not going to use this space to explain the nature of Neturei Karta and why they are outliers to every kind of Judaism. My point is how often I am sent pictures of them, to assure me, I assume, that truly orthodox Jews hate Israel to the same degree as Islamic jihadists or French fascists.
Another picture which sometimes comes my way depicts an unattractive Israeli, designated a settler by those posting the image, saying ‘If I don’t steal it, somebody else will.’ I am sent this to tell me that I am complicit with theft.
I am often advised to block instantly but social media is performative, bystanders are not always well-informed, and there is an impulse to defend oneself, myself, from accusations of racism, theft, lying or genocide, speaking of which, if I had an agora (one hundredth of a shekel) for every time I am called genocidal, I could afford to take out a subscription to the Times Online.
It is not worth pursuing a self-defensive strategy in the face of pictorial memes. In most cases, several tweets would be required. It is said that one picture is worth a thousand words, possibly because they are more easily consumed by a reader who may be averse to reading a thousand words.
‘Try living in a black skin,’ admonishes this tweeter, ‘Oh wait a minute’ Laughing emoji inserted.
Does he mean that there is no chance of me living in a black skin? I’d say he’s not wrong there. As I often remark, I am not just white but pallid. I used to joke that this was due to some Cossack input in my DNA, but that’s no longer a joking matter when ‘Khazar’ is one of the many contemporary go-to insults to aim at Jews. Besides, I have had my DNA tested and there are no Cossacks in the picture.
In further dialogue, the interlocutor tells me that he is black, so I consider it reasonable that he is appalled by blackface performance and cosplay. He objects to it from David Baddiel as he sees him as a person who makes moral pronouncements against antisemitism and, perhaps to show his workings out, he sends me a picture of marchers carrying a banner displaying the words ‘International Jewish Anti Zionist Network.’
The most disturbing photos I am sent are of injured or dead children, who the senders say are Palestinian. Sometimes the photos are revealed to have a Syrian provenance but there are enough children suffering in Gaza for deceit to be unnecessary. Why must I be shown the photos? It is because I am Jewish and a Zionist, not an ‘anti Zionist’ like Neturei Karta or that International Network which may comprise anything from six to a thousand persons.
If someone who had not, like me, been on Twitter since the ancient of days, asked me how to respond to these pictures which are worth a thousand words, I would say ‘Block, block, block.’ You never regret it.
The only problem is that if one wants an insight into how contemporary antisemitism works and justifies itself, one has to see the effluvia.
I get sent pictures of Hitler too, of Nuremberg rallies and of gas canisters, these from the far right who have made Twitter their home.
Some, especially my contemporaries ie old people, tell me to come off of social media away from the horrors, but one makes friends too, so the horrors are balanced out by friendships, alliances and by the exchange of information.
Rabbi Tarfon used to say, ‘It is not for us to complete the work, but neither are we free to desist from it.’
רבי טרפון אומר לא עליך המלאכה לגמור ולא אתה בן חורין ליבטל ממנה
Pirkei Avot 2:16
Post script
I forgot about this meme, very overtly antisemitic while denying the reality of antisemitism. I was sent it a minute ago, a riposte from someone on Twitter. Waste not, want not.
Neviim Tovim, blogs by Gillian Gould Lazarus 