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A Moral Conundrum

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It’s a strange moral conundrum to experience at my age. A colleague has been hit on the head and hospitalized after resisting arrest during one of the anti-semitic protests. Normally, I’d send flowers and try to visit. But it’s kind of weird to do that when he’s been hit while engaged in Jew-hatred. It feels clownish, like I’m putting on a show.

My heart bleeds for him. He’s 65 and not in the best of health. A wonderful, sweet, gentle person. With the most outlandishly anti-Semitic ideas (e.g. Jews should all go back to Europe where they belong, etc.).

If only it were somebody that’s easy to dislike. This person isn’t.

31 responses to “A Moral Conundrum”

  1. Avatar
    Anonymous

    —With the most outlandishly anti-Semitic ideas (e.g. Jews should all go back to Europe where they belong, etc.).

    I could think of many even more outlandish anti-Semitic ideas, unfortunately…

    Also, while I do see how “Jews should all go back to Europe” is an anti-Israel idea (because this both would undermine Israel from a purely “technical” perspective and also shows lack of understanding of why European Jews founded modern Israel in the first place), without additional context I do not see how this specific idea is anti-Semitic, as in – how is this manifesting the hatred of Jews? Is it implied that living in Europe would be some kind of a punishment? That having to experience a move is a punishment? (moving countries is hard but does your colleague wants the Jews to experience hardship for the sake of hardship?) That Jews, should they move to Europe, will be less safe in Europe than they are in Israel? And that this being less safe and actually experiencing some kind of persecution is the result actually desired by your colleague? What is his motivation?

    Do not get me wrong – I am concerned with the safety and well being of the Jewish people. But I do not see how calling everything from being insensitive to criticizing Israel “anti-Semitism” is serving Jewish people… Or Israel, for that matter. As far as I can see, when these accusations become a standard response to a too wide variety of input, they start to be seen as nothing more than the attempts to silence the opponents (not that different from phenomena that are categorized under wokeness and cancel culture). And dismissed. And then when the bad wolf really comes, they may get dismissed again…

    v07

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Imagine a college professor giving a talk on campus and saying, “Black people should go back to Africa.” Imagine the consequences of that. Imagine your own reaction. Would you instantly understand why it’s not OK to say that? Or would questions arise?

      I’m not going to ask you what the administration’s reaction to such a statement would be. We all know it very well. And this is the answer to how it serves.

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      1. Avatar
        Anonymous

        I’m not in the humanities, and not an profesisional academic. All the wokeness of the lat 5 years has made me more sympathetic of the statement “Black people should go back to Africa”. I don’t agree with it but I can sort of see how that was a politically viable thing to believe at one point. On an emotional level, If I heard a talk about someone saying “black people should go back to Africa” I would think “hmm interesting why does this person think that” but also “that’s not going to happen so there’s not too much point in taking that notion too far”.

        It’s also not clear from these comments whether your problem is with your friend’s beliefs, or with the double standard that leftist politics has and academic administration has.

        -YZ

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      2. Avatar
        Anonymous

        The commonality between “Black people should go back to Africa.”and “Jews should go back to Europe” is that both phrases follow the pattern “group X should go back to Y”. Otherwise the historical context is very different. Especially in the US where most blacks did not come of their own free will. Nor did they have an intention to build a state where the blacks would be the dominant group. Nor did they have any historic claim to North America.

        So the world where these two statements are similar is the world operating with oversimplified cliches and reacting to keywords instead of substance.

        —When Palestinians say ‘go back to Europe’, they mean ‘die already’ in polite words.

        I actually believe that some Palestinians (and true anti-Semites elsewhere) do think this way. But I do not think most of their Western supporters do. For them it is a mirror image of Israelis’ “Why wouldn’t those Palestinians just go to some Arab country?” [ and remove the problem by moving themselves]. Moving and becoming somebody else’s problem, not dying. Insensitive, sure, but not murderous.

        —Btw, Israeli Jews have much better feelings about US than about ‘antisemitic Europe.’ If forced to immigrate, we would’ve joined your colleague in Ametica.

        What if US and Canada offered vastly simplified immigration for Israeli Jews?

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          Please make the statement “blacks should go back to Africa” at work, and then explain these important nuances when the blowback begins. “Arabs should go back to their countries of origin” or “Indians should go back to India” also works.

          I’m eagerly awaiting an update on how that went.

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          1. Avatar
            Anonymous

            My position is that these two statements are different and so it does not surprise me that they are treated differently. Why should I do anything to prove that they will indeed be treated differently?

            v07

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          2. methylethyl Avatar
            methylethyl

            I’m still waiting for the Irish/Scots/English/Welsh should all go back to the UK one. We definitely wouldn’t all fit on those islands anymore.

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        2. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          Also, I have to remind that the US blacks didn’t come anywhere of their free will or not. They were born here. Exactly like the Jews in Israel.

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          1. Avatar
            Anonymous

            You can use whichever logic you like, as long as it is consistent. If we define those things by birth and outside of historical context, this is fine with me, but then the same logic applies to the Palestinians and it does not matter if they are “a nation” (neither are the US blacks) or if their culture is not rich enough, or if they are not civilized enough, or when their ancestors came to the area in question and why.

            v07

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            1. Clarissa Avatar
              Clarissa

              OK, let’s apply it to Palestinians. Would you be able publicly to make a statement at your job that Palestinians should return back to the Middle East? What consequences would you suffer for that statement?

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        3. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          I’d love to hear where exactly professors in America have announced to a large audience in the presence of administrators that Palestinians should go to some Arab country. I’d be eager to hear of any university where such views can be made public.

          It’s very strange that people would insist on pretending not to understand how utterly impossible such statements are in US academia regarding any groups except for Jews and, of course, white people in general.

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    2. Avatar
      Anonymous

      “That Jews, should they move to Europe, will be less safe in Europe than they are in Israel?”

      Er…yes. Where have you been for the past twenty years? There aren’t that many Jews left in Europe.

      Liked by 1 person

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      1. Avatar
        Anonymous

        —Where have you been for the past twenty years?

        Had to do some research… Hope you trust the source.

        https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/comprehensive-listing-of-terrorism-victims-in-israel

        As it is said there, the numbers do not include IDF personnel.

        During the same period, the total number of Jews killed in terrorist attacks for Europe was very significantly lower.

        I understand that you do not want to give the terrorists satisfaction of chasing Jews out of Israel and I respect that. But saying it is safer in Israel sounds like wishful thinking even if one ignores October the 7th… Making a choice to stay in (or come to) Israel for patriotic reasons and objective reality of safety or lack thereof are apples and oranges…

        v07

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  2. Robert Basil Avatar
    Robert Basil

    It’s hard to discern what this person’s ideas and actions are, from your description. If he was hit on the head protesting Israel’s war crimes against Gaza, then it cannot be said that his protest was anti-semitic. If he believes that all Jews need to relocate to Europe, that is another thing all together.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      Sincere question: do you honestly think there is anybody protesting war crimes there? I mean, we’ve seen Bucha, Irpin, chemical attacks, cluster munitions, gang rape of toddlers, torture chambers, 100,000 corpses of civilians in Mariupol alone. Two years of absolute horror. Zero protests on US campuses. Complete indifference. The people from my campus who went to protest in St Louis haven’t found an opportunity in 2 years to tell me, “gosh, I’m so sorry this is happening.” Nothing. Zero interest. So I’m guessing it’s not about war crimes. If you care about war crimes, you’d react to any war crimes. So why no reaction to the complete obliteration of several Ukrainian cities?

      I cannot find a way to seeing these protesters as people who care about war crimes.

      Liked by 1 person

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      1. Avatar
        Anonymous

        A big difference is that the US is supplying Israel with pretty much any weapons they want. I think we would see protests if the US was supporting Russia the same way.

        I know it’s not the only difference and that Ukrainians haven’t started the war by carrying out a horrific terrorist attack in Russia.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          I could write and write about how the US is supplying Russia with weapons and how the US engineered this situation with decades of foreign policy aimed at enabling Russia to invade but I won’t because it’s a waste of time. People choose not to know. And there are reasons for that choice.

          Liked by 2 people

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  3. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    I cannot find a way to seeing these protesters as people who care about war crimes.

    I, personally, don’t care. It’s wonderful to see the leftist infighting right before the elections. All the republicans had to do was to sit back and watch their opponents self-destruct. Use this as an opportunity to drive home the point that elite college education is fucking useless, this is what taxpayers are actually funding, propose (massively popular) policies that would tax university endowments, etc.

    But no, they have to insert themselves into the drama and call for an expansion of the DEI bureaucracy by including antisemitism. Why is texas governor Abbott sending in the national guard when he did no such thing during the 100x more violent BLM riots? Useless fucking frauds. GOP really is controlled opposition. They do not want to win.

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  4. Stringer Bell Avatar
    Stringer Bell

    Both sides’ american supporters are the best argument for the other side.

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  5. Avi Avatar
    Avi

    Of course none of these protestors cares about victims of war per se. Where were they when the Syrians, the Yemenis, the Sudanese and countless other nationalities were being butchered by their own governments or by terrorists inside their countries less than a couple of years ago?

    Pro-Pal demonstrators are the same as the BLM crowds: it’s a complex mixture of virtue-signalling, self-abasement, White guilt and generic “liberal-progressivist” revolutionary fervour, especially widespread among post-1960s liberals who are now entering old age and are mostly White and/or Jewish. The younger crowd is similar but newly infected with Wokism. Different viruses, same diseased brains.

    Your conundrum makes me think of Flannery O’Connor’s great insight, from one of her essays, “If other ages felt less, they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness. It is a tenderness which, long cut off from the person of Christ, is wrapped in theory. When tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced-labor camps and in the fumes of the gas chamber.“

    I understand your pain and sympathy for your elderly colleague, but I would not waste it on anyone who is bent on destroying everything for which you have fought and for which you live.

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  6. el Avatar
    el

    \ the most outlandishly anti-Semitic ideas (e.g. Jews should all go back to Europe where they belong, etc.).

    Only Israeli Jews or American Jews too?

    Everybody in America is an immigrant, why should only Jews be sent ‘home’?

    Btw, Israeli Jews have much better feelings about US than about ‘antisemitic Europe.’ If forced to immigrate, we would’ve joined your colleague in Ametica.

    When Palestinians say ‘go back to Europe’, they mean ‘die already’ in polite words. I am surprised somebody intellectual would not think and just throw wild, impossible ideas like that. To where in Europe would Jews from Arab countries go? Or other Jews who were born in Israel and have no additional citizenship?

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      And it was said at a university. A place of knowledge and learning. With Jewish people sitting right there in the audience. And I have to explain why it’s not an OK thing to say even here on the blog, which already tells us a lot. There’s zero likelihood that one could give a talk about how “Arabs should go back to wherever” or “Asians should go back to Asia.” Only about Jews is it possible to say that.

      Why “back to Europe”, too? At that talk one person in the audience asked that. “Are Jews originally from Europe? Are they an indigenous European group?” And the speaker failed to answer. He just couldn’t bring himself to say the words.

      It’s extraordinary that I have to explain why it’s hard for me fully to sympathize with a person who would say things like that about my ethnic group.

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  7. methylethyl Avatar
    methylethyl

    On the one hand, St. Elizabeth went to visit her husband’s murderer in prison.

    On the other hand, he was still a raving hate machine and nothing came of it.

    Are you looking for the right thing to do as a coworker, as a friend, or as a Christian?

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I gave as much as I could when I didn’t demolish him publicly at that talk. I’m known for destroying woke speakers in ways that people aren’t likely to forget. Right before that talk he’d done something extremely kind for me. Came through in a massive way, so I stayed silent out of gratitude. The whole talk was horrid. It was insulting not only to Jews but to Christians with perverted quotes from the Bible. But I chose not to humiliate him in public. That’s as much as I had to give.

      Liked by 2 people

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      1. methylethyl Avatar
        methylethyl

        St. Basil advises that when someone offends us, we should take it up with them privately and not chastise them in public. It sounds like you’re halfway there.

        Liked by 1 person

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      2. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        I also have another close friend who signed a disgusting open letter accusing Jews of a global financial conspiracy. That one hurt as a bastard.

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        1. methylethyl Avatar
          methylethyl

          Ouch. 

          I guess at the most basic level, it’s a don’t return hate for hate thing.

          Talking to someone privately about an offense is more of a rule for dealing with each other *inside a Christian community*.

          It is not abnormal for the world outside to be hostile to us, though.

          Liked by 1 person

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  8. Avatar
    Anonymous

    How about condemn the attack on him by US cops just for taking photos of policemen violating people’s rights? No matter how you feel about him, your opinion about police violence should remain firm, no?

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      My opinion is actually that police should be able to use force against people who are breaking the public order.

      As for “people’s rights”, there is no right to make a public nuisance of oneself. Once again, the word “right” is being used without any consideration for its meaning.

      Liked by 1 person

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      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        I keep having the feeling that people are talking to somebody else. When was I ever against “police violence”? Even before my conservative turn, I left the BLM in 2012 when I realized that the movement was going to be against “police brutality”, a completely invented concept. Being a naive person, I had sincerely thought it was going to be about the atrociously high murder rates of black people.

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  9. PaulS Avatar
    PaulS

    In SA, Jews are traditionally considered white. Specifically antisemitic propaganda seems to be coming from Russia.

    https://www.biznews.com/thought-leaders/2024/04/17/rw-johnson-amandla-zumas-russian-media

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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