Every once in a while I feel it necessary to clean out my electronic cupboard labeled "Jewish Junk." It is there that I file material far to the right or the left. Usually I glance without reading closely, in order to keep my blood pressure at levels that daily pills can control. Some of it so ridiculous as to be funny. Some of it may be dangerous, insofar as it can incite extremes to the point where no accommodation with Palestinians or others is possible.
In the sub-category of the ridiculous is a circular that I received several times, beginning about a year ago. Its message was that educational authorities of the United Kingdom had removed teaching about the Holocaust from schools through the country, due to pressure from Muslims. The authors urged that their circular be passed on to the entire address book of all recipients. Only in this way could we deal with this latest threat to the Jewish people. Googling revealed that this was a myth. A few local schools had bowed to such pressure, but no such policy had been taken across the United Kingdom. The vast majority of British children were still learning about the Holocaust.
The panic apparent in the letter about the UK turned to the corner to the absurd with a more recent circular indicating that the University of Kentucky had stopped teaching about the Holocaust due to Muslim pressure. It aroused my suspicion due to language identical to the letter about the United Kingdom. Guess what? A genius focused on the UK in the earlier letter, and concluded that it concerned the University of Kentucky. A web site of the university assured visitors that there was a course labeled The Holocaust as part of the university's program in Jewish Studies.
Daniel Pipes has several entries in my cupboard of Jewish Junk. His latest is an item on his web site--and passed along to me by several sources-- indicating that Barak Obama may really be a Muslim, despite his continued insistent that he is a Christian. (http:www.danielpipes.org/article/5286) Pipes' analysis focuses on Obama's middle name (Hussein), and a long absent Kenyan father, whose ancestors may have been Muslim. Pipes argues that Americans ought to be wary of choosing a president with Muslim roots, insofar as Muslim extremists would target him as an apostate subject to a death penalty. I perceive a subtext suggesting that Jews should not vote for an individual who might be a Muslim, or feel close to Muslims. To be sure, one cannot be sure about the meaning of "subtexts" that are not explicit in a message. The danger is that Obama or people close to him would view Pipes' writing as a Jewish plot against their candidacy. Not smart to turn a potential president into someone suspicious about the Jews.
Another item came to me several times, and originated with Reuven Koret, who says that he is the publisher of Israel Insider: Israel's Daily Newsmagazine. All that may be true, but this was my first notice of him or his magazine in the 32.5 years I have lived here. In a piece headlined "Applying Jim Crow laws to Israel: An Open Letter to Secretary Rice," Koret writes that the American Secretary of State is violating her own life story by pressing on Israel concessions to Arab leaders who are nothing but Ku Klux Klan-type racists intent on exterminating the "people of Israel from the Land of Israel."
(http://web.israelinsider.com/views/12434.htm)
"Secretary Rice, neither you nor your bosses, have the right to judge us, nor do our leaders have the right to let you to do so. You are acting in ways that show us that you are not an honest broker, nor someone who knows very much about our region, and certainly not our country. Only the people of Israel can decide what is in the interests of the people of Israel.
You are aligning yourself with the world's most racist and anti-semitic autocracies. And if your actions in Annapolis, and in your subsequent maneuver at the UN, are any guide, you are learning from them and following their orders like they were your slavers. You are applying Jim Crow laws to Israel. That should as shameful and humiliating for you as it is for us."
Enough from the right. I generally do not bother saving the junk that I receive from the Jewish left. When in need, I can find all I want on the op-ed page of Ha'aretz. Anyone wanting examples can Google Amira Hess and/or Gideon Levy. They will supply all one wants to support the view that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is almost entirely the fault of Israeli racists, imperialists, trigger-happy soldiers, mad settlers, and policymakers who do little more than contrive to maintain an illegal conquest.
Ha'aretz remains Israel's best daily newspaper. But its editor is as extreme as some of its columnists. David Landau attended a private meeting of leading journalists with Secretary of State Rice. Insofar as he was only one of about 20 news people in attendance, it did not take long for reports about him to begin circulating. There is some dispute about what he said. One claim is that he referred to Israel as a "failed state" in need of a U.S.-imposed settlement. He implored Rice to intervene, saying that the Israeli government wanted "to be raped" and that it would be like a "wet dream" for him to see this happen. Landau said his views had been delivered with "much more sophistication. . . . I did say that in general, Israel wants to be raped -- I did use that word -- by the U.S., and I myself have long felt Israel needed more vigorous U.S. intervention in the affairs of the Middle East." (http://www.jrtelegraph.com/2007/12/haaretz-editor.html)
Not all of the junk written about Israel comes from Jews. An Israeli concerned about remaining well balanced may be tempted by Jews to join the anti-Semites, but I am not there yet. Arab activists and the most sophisticated of distant intellectuals and politicians provide enough to demonstrate that the junk is not entirely Jewish. Israel is not a country of the mad, but it seems to incite madness. Jewish junk deserves a letter of its own. I have written, and will write further about non-Jewish junk.