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‘Healing’? No Way.

Posted November 10th, 2016 by Lesley Hazleton

What American voters did this week is obscene.

But no, it did not come as a surprise.  A shock, yes, to see it actually unfold.  But a surprise, no.  It’s not as though the short history of democracy has always favored the angels.  Or as though the human capacity for resentment, bigotry, and sheer dumbness is any less than it always has been.  Or as though people ever tell the truth to pollsters.

But still, we hoped that sanity would prevail.  And for now, that hope is shattered.

Here in Seattle, we’re a deep blue island on the edge of a vast ocean of red.  There’s a heavy silence in the air,  as though the whole city is in mourning.  And indeed that’s the word I keep hearing.  Take the time to mourn so that we can recover from the shock, we’re told.  Work our way through Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief.  “Heal.”

Humbug, more like it.  We’re being psycho-babbled into resignation.

Those five stages of grief?  They’re denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

But I am not in denial.  I will make no bargains with monstrosity.  I totally refuse the luxury of depression or despair.  And please just pull the plug on me if I ever accept this vile travesty of a human being as the 45th president of the United States.

That leaves anger.  And this is not a comfortable place to be.  Anger eats at you; it’s toxic.  But then that is the hallmark of the man who is now the president-elect.

I’ve felt that toxicity seeping into me over the past few months.  Felt my temper shortening;  my tolerance for disagreement diminishing;  my language  — as a writer! — reduced to spitting, spluttering outrage.

Sounds like I could do with some healing?  No.  Please don’t even think of telling me that this is the time for that.  Try telling it to the people who will now methodically dismantle every step towards progress made over the past eight years.  Go ahead, just try.  They’re laughing at you already.

Which leaves the option of… leaving.  We joked about that.  Canada, Costa Rica, Iceland, Malta, New Zealand?  We amused ourselves by toying with possibilities in after-dinner conversation, indulged in fantasy, knowing — or thinking we knew — that it would never come to that.

And it hasn’t.  Because I’m damned if I’ll leave.  Damned if I’ll give up.  Damned if I’ll be driven out by bigotry and stupidity.

I will stay.  We all will — all the plurality of voters who saw a Democrat win the popular vote but lose the election for the second time in twenty years.

We, the majority, will take this country back again.  And if the price to be paid is years of anger, I for one am willing to pay it.  Because while anger may be toxic, resignation is far more so.

Resignation only enables foulness.  And for those who give in to it, it erodes self-respect, and leads to the paralysis of helplessness, even of despair.   We can afford none of that.

The United States has elected bad presidents before, and we have paid the price in what is monstrously called “blood and treasure” — as have others.  But never has as god-awful a candidate as this one been elected.  So the very least we owe ourselves — and others —  is to dig our heels in, do our damnedest to limit the damage, and however long it takes, make sure it never happens again.

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Psychopath, Defined

Posted August 2nd, 2016 by Lesley Hazleton

dt

The word “psychopath” gets tossed around a lot.

So it occurred to me to check out how it’s defined in psychiatry.

I began with this piece in ‘Psychology Today,’ and went on to check out the Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R) and the Psychopathic Personality Inventory (PPI).

Here are the chief 15 psychiatric symptoms, every one of which is markedly present in the Republican nominee for president of the United States:

1. Callousness

2. Absence of remorse or shame

3. Externalization of blame

4. Glibness

5. Conning others for personal profit or pleasure

6. Outlandish lying

7. Grandiose sense of self-worth

8. Boastfulness

9. Pathological egocentricity

10. Inability to modulate responses

11. Parasitic lifestyle

12. Low tolerance for frustration

13. High irritability

14. High aggressiveness

15. Indifference to plans

Here is what amazes me:  A presidential candidate displays every sign of psychopathy.  That is, of a severe and dangerous personality disorder.  Every single sign.  He is, in fact, a classic case.  And yet so far as I know, no psychiatrist has yet said this publicly.

President Obama just called Trump “unfit” to serve as president.  That’s a gentle word.  “Unfit” could mean simply unsuited, or not a good fit.  But what it really means, in  this case, is sick.

It’s rather like the emperor’s new clothes, isn’t it?  The Republican nominee shows every sign of being in dire need of psychiatric treatment.  And yet nobody says so.

 

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Staring At The Void

Posted April 13th, 2016 by Lesley Hazleton

I’ve been to New York City many times since September 11, 2001.  And each time, avoided going anywhere near Ground Zero, now formally known as the National September 11 Memorial.  I didn’t want to make a pilgrimage to disaster.  Didn’t want to take part in what felt like an act of national piety.  And yet I felt oddly guilty about not going.

Last Friday, I was in New York again.  It was horrible weather:  the whole city in complaint about the bitter cold, the biting wind, the snow flurries.  “And in April!” people kept saying, as though the season only added to the insult.

I had an early afternoon appointment way downtown.  And when I checked the map, realized it was just two blocks from Ground Zero.  It had taken me fifteen years, but the time had clearly come.

I’d seen photographs of the memorial, of course — and much admired the concept of it.  Not the conventional obelisk or spire lifting the eyes skyward, nor even the black marble wall built into the landscape of Maya Lin’s Vietnam War memorial in DC.  No.  This one, by comparison, was unutterably spare.  It didn’t lift off the ground or nest into it.  Instead, it went deep down into it.  Where the two towers had been, two giant squares had been dug, and filled partway with water.  Each almost an acre in size, they covered the footprints of the twin towers.  And at the center of each pool was a far deeper one, a sharp descent into what seemed to be a bottomless black square — a void within a void.

So why did I need to see this “in the flesh,” as it were?  I kept asking myself that question as I followed the thin stream of tourists who’d braved the weather, wool caps pulled low, scarves multiply wound, collars and shoulders hunched against the wind.  Were their eyes streaming in the wind like mine?  They had to be.  There is something about the iciness of a wintry Manhattan wind as it funnels through the high-rise canyons that seems to suck tears out of your eyes.

As we entered the plaza — past three guys handing out pamphlets for the memorial museum, each of them incongruously sporting green plastic Statue of Liberty headgear — I was wondering if there wasn’t something kind of ghoulish about this.  All these people going to see where all these other people had died?  The site of nearly three thousand horrific deaths becoming an item to be ticked off the tourist checklist?  What was I doing here?

Yet I resisted the urge to turn back.  As everyone else headed straight for the shelter of the museum building, I went the other way to the North Pool, the one where the North Tower had been.  I leaned over the waist-high parapet, its bronze surface etched with names of those who’d died, and the moment I did so, all my questions faded into very small, graceless quibbles.

What I saw was grey on grey on grey.  Concrete on concrete.  A square within a square, so sparse as to be brutalistic.  And this brutalism moved me — deeply and unexpectedly — because surely, it was what was needed.

I made my way to the south edge so as to get my back to the wind, but still it seemed to knife right through me — through the leather motorcycle jacket, through the fleece ski leggings, through the wool beret.  My eyes streamed more than ever — was it only the wind? — and as the tears threatened to freeze on my cheeks, I realized how utterly different this was from the photos I’d seen.

They’d showed placid water calmly spilling over from the upper square into the lower one — less my idea of a waterfall than of a large-scale ornamental water feature.  But the water this afternoon was anything but placid.  It was angry, roiled up by the wind dipping into it and howling over it, raising whitecaps and sending giant silvery curtains of wind-drift over the surface.  The water didn’t merely fall into the deep center square:  it fell over itself, boiling in icy tumult, tumbling and cascading into the void.

I stood.  Still.  Shivering.  For I don’t know how long.  In sadness, in awe, in admiration at how the designer, Michael Arad, had created what felt like sacred space out of  public place.  Not the kind of sacred space that elevates you, but the kind that fills you with dread, and with the biting awareness of how fragile life can be.

“You should have taken a photograph,” a friend said that evening.  But I had no need to.  That time I spent leaning over the parapet is unforgettable, and what I saw is etched in my mind as indelibly as the terrible images from fifteen years ago.  “There’ll be lots of photos online,” I said.  And indeed there are.  But all seem to be with the water calm.  It seems nobody pauses to takes photographs when an icy wind is blowing.  And many of the photographers had clearly waited for dusk, when the walls are lit up for dramatic effect, though all the lighting did, to my eye, was prettify what should never be prettified.  After a half-hour of online scrolling, I found not one photo that came anywhere near expressing the forlorn quality of the place last Friday afternoon — the terrible, abandoned greyness of it.

And maybe that’s as it should be.  How, after all, do you photograph absence?  How do you photograph a void?

 

–

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File under: art, existence, ugliness | Tagged: Tags: 9/11, Ground Zero, Maya Lin, Michael Arad, National September 11 Memorial, photography, sacred space, twin towers, waterfall pools | Be the First to leave a comment

Seeing Evil

Posted December 29th, 2015 by Lesley Hazleton

In end-of-the-year phone calls from friends near and far, many express despair at the state of the world. I fully understand why, but I don’t accept their despair. In fact I can make a strong argument against it. Because what has changed is not so much the world itself, but our awareness of it.

drowned boyA single click on the screen you’re looking at right now will bring you to visceral images from thousands of miles away. A Syrian boy’s body washed up on the shore of a Greek island. A young woman beaten to death and set on fire in Afghanistan after a malicious rumor that she had burned a Quran (which leads me to ask “and even if she had…?”). Crazed Israeli settlers celebrating a wedding by cheering the arson murder of a Palestinian baby. A white cop shooting a fleeing black man in the back. We focus on such images, and ask what the world has come to.

We forget where it has come from.

When Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker’s book The Better Angels of Our Nature came out a few years ago, I bristled at the pseudo-religious sentimentality of the title. (Okay, I still do.) But the book has stayed with me, along with its subtitle: “why violence has declined.” Yes, you read that right.

Pinker is no cock-eyed optimist: he’s an empiricist, and he spends close to 700 pages proving his point with data . “We can see our world as a nightmare of crime, terrorism, genocide, and war,” he writes, “or as a period that, by the standards of history, is blessed by unprecedented levels of peaceful coexistence.”

Now, it’s true “the standards of history” are pretty low, and that as Pinker himself notes, to make such a case in a century that began with 9/11, Darfur, and Iraq could well be seen as hallucinatory, even obscene. But it’s also true that despite what we see on the news, more people live more safely than ever before.

The difference is that now we know about violence. News spreads almost instantaneously. Cellphones are everywhere. Images are captured in real time, and seen in real time. And it’s only human to focus on these images.

So how do we deal with so much knowledge? How do we go about our lives with this awareness?

Outrage, shock, and even despair all seem to me healthy reactions. Because they are reactions, and not so long ago, there were none.  White cops once shot unarmed black men as a matter of routine. Refugees have drowned and starved in far greater numbers in the past. Women were once set on fire in Massachusetts as well as in Afghanistan. And massacres were by the thousands, even without the aid of guns. But all of this was hidden from immediate consciousness. Such events once passed for the most part unnoticed, unreported, unremarked upon until far later.

And more important, we didn’t see the violence. We didn’t have the evidence of our eyes. Now we do, and it encourages me that we are shocked. That we are outraged. That we do condemn. That we do care.

Evil can no longer take place under the cloak of silence.  We hear it, and we see it. And we speak up against it. We are all witnesses now. And as witnesses, we will step forward.

And yes, despite the evidence of our eyes, this is progress.

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File under: sanity, technology, ugliness, war | Tagged: Tags: Afghanistan, cellphones, Israel, Palestine, Refugees, Steven Pinker, Syria, The Better Angels of Our Nature, violence | 15 Comments
  1. Candace Moore Hill says:
    December 29, 2015 at 10:28 am

    Dear Lesley, you and I are in complete agreement, but no one was burned at the stake in the Salem witch trials. Lynchings around the country maybe, but not as capital punishment.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      December 29, 2015 at 11:03 am

      Just checked, and you’re right: they were hung. In Denmark, they were burned.

      • Candace Moore Hill says:
        December 29, 2015 at 11:34 am

        Lots of burning in England as well. Which is an interesting question to ask, burning at the stake did not happen in the United States as a public execution, why was that? Lynching is another matter.

  2. Rachel Cowan says:
    December 29, 2015 at 11:41 am

    Thanks Leslie,
    I needed this reminder. I read articles about his book when it came out, and I hold to the anti-despair position, but sometimes my attention sags, and despair creeps in.

  3. Robin Bissiri-Lewis says:
    December 29, 2015 at 12:18 pm

    Yes.
    Various societies can allow the weight of knowledge, pertaining to worldwide human suffering, to crush the spirit of hope and resolve OR motivate all of us to collectively seek ways to relieve and prevent that which afflicts others.
    Positioning ourselves like the 3 chimps with hands over eyes, ears and mouths is a common impulse but we CAN and must overcome this!

  4. Anne says:
    December 29, 2015 at 12:49 pm

    Maybe “evil can no longer take place under the cloak of silence”, but evil seems to be doing just fine in the light of day. As of a few days ago, it appears that sentences in Farkhunda’s murder are being commuted and it is uncertain what the disposition of the case will be.
    Video of a “A white cop shooting a fleeing black man in the back” didn’t seem to deter the shooting of a white man (and the subsequent murder of his autistic 6 year old son, Jeremy Mardis), allegedly by black officers. All of the visibility and condemnation of the drug-related violence in Mexico hasn’t lessened the horror. It would seem that the determination of what is evil (or the degree of evil and whether to punish, or how severely to punish) is pretty much in the culture’s (those in power in the culture) eye.

    We know evil, we see it within a few hours, we condemn it, but now what?

  5. Pat Davis says:
    December 29, 2015 at 1:02 pm

    And it was not just “women” murdered in Salem, one was my great grandfather X6, Samuel Wardwell, hung on the gallows. He was an architect and builder of the House of Seven Gables (now the Salem museum.) His crime: a bachelor who scooped up the best looking widow in the area..

  6. John Odum says:
    December 29, 2015 at 1:11 pm

    Thanks for your optimism. Progress has always been a messy, “three-steps-forward-two-steps-back” business. When you’re in the midst of it, it’s hard to tell how to measure a step (or to have any clear sense of where you are in the process). It gets hard to avoid drowning in the gloom sometimes, but as you say – onward and upward. Of course these days we also have the complication of whether or not the rate of degrading planetary habitability is compatible with our process/pace of improvement as a species (yikes).

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      December 29, 2015 at 1:46 pm

      Yes, measuring the size of steps is tricky business, as is figuring out which way you’re going on them. Do they go up or do they go down, or are we all in the middle of an Escher drawing? (or stuck on one of those weird gym machines). Plus, I wonder if there’s a link between the violence we do to the planet and the violence we do to each other…

  7. jveeds says:
    December 29, 2015 at 3:17 pm

    As an anonymous would-be philosophe once said: “A bigger window always reveals more scenery…but not always the scene you want.”

    (Ok, that was me who said that).

  8. Dr Mansour Malik says:
    December 29, 2015 at 9:45 pm

    Our world is in a mess. I agree with you we must keep our hope and positive way for a better peaceful world

  9. Life's backpacker says:
    December 30, 2015 at 3:18 am

    Hi Leslie, very insightful and yes something that has come to my mind too. Thanks for putting the right words together (wish they could come as easily to me). Which brings me to my next question; is war/violence/death an auto-immune response by God/nature/whatever-you-choose-to-call-that-power, to the burgeoning population of this planet?

  10. Fran Love says:
    December 30, 2015 at 5:44 pm

    Leslie thank you for this reminder that all the current atrocities are actual improvements to previous times. I certainly was not looking at it that way so your point of view, and Pinker’s. is an important reminder for us all.

  11. lynnrosengiordano says:
    December 30, 2015 at 11:42 pm

    As Fran says, you’ve opened some eyes on world perspective and the actual progression of human kindness Thanks for the reminder.

  12. De Lise Hartzell says:
    December 31, 2015 at 8:54 am

    Your blog brings up a very good point. Going to read the book you mentioned.
    I have wondered and debated the same question.

    Awareness precedes action.

Speaking Out

Posted December 18th, 2015 by Lesley Hazleton

Sometimes you have the privilege of getting to say the right thing at the right time, as with this nine-minute talk I gave the other night to a hugely supportive audience of Christians and Muslims at Trinity Lutheran Church in Lynnwood, WA.  The event was called “Love in a Time of Fear,” but I wasn’t afraid, I was angry, and I said so:

 

[youtube=https://youtu.be/RhKDsdIeeHo]

Full video of the evening is here, with special thanks to Terry Kyllo of Catacomb Churches and to Jeff Siddiqui for bringing it all together, and to the excellent work of Lutheran Community Services Northwest in support of Syrian refugees.

 

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File under: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, ugliness, US politics | Tagged: Tags: abortion, Black Lives Matter, Colorado Springs, Donald Trump, gay marriage, Hitler, Martin Niemoller, neo-fascism, New York Daily News, Planned Parenthood, Republican party, San Bernardino, Ted Cruz | 3 Comments
  1. Mary Johnson says:
    December 18, 2015 at 2:17 pm

    Thank you, Lesley. This is SO important, and so well said.

    You might be interested in this, from my sister Margaret, who converted to Islam before the birth of her first child and is trying to raise a Muslim family in the US: https://medium.com/@coexistmarge/this-time-it-s-different-c0c70fd2db3f#.yo8zgn6nj

    Hoping you are well. Thankful you are angry.

    Mary

    >

  2. Nuzhat says:
    December 18, 2015 at 8:17 pm

    Every voice raised is a step towards correction. There may be enough laid back listeners, but being a part of the vocal band is being more responsible, and important in awakening the sense of direction the listeners can take.
    You always hit the mark with even few words said, Lesley….
    well spoken!
    Nuzhat.

  3. Frederick Osman says:
    December 19, 2015 at 2:13 pm

    Thank you, Lesley. Wonderful, as usual.

That’s Entertainment?

Posted June 12th, 2014 by Lesley Hazleton

Does this television sequence sound familiar?

Night time. A woman brushing her teeth in the bathroom. A dark shadow appears behind her. A gloved hand clamps over her mouth. A struggle. A knife. Cut to morning. Bloodied body on the floor. Enter detective, with dumb ‘witticism’ along the lines of “Had a hard night.” Cut to commercials.

Pcriminal mindsrime-time television makes a fortune out of women being stalked, beaten, raped, tortured, and murdered.   All in high-def detail, of course. Programs such as Law and Order’s sleazy ‘Special Victims Unit’ spinoff and the even sleazier Criminal Minds are huge money-making franchises, every episode sold on first to cable and then throughout the world.

patinkinMandy Patinkin, one of my favorite actors, walked out on Criminal Minds after its first two years, calling it a huge mistake to have ever accepted a starring role on it. “I never thought they were going to kill and rape all these women every night, every day, week after week, year after year,” he said. “It was very destructive to my soul and my personality.”

It is very destructive to all our souls and personalities.

So why don‘t all the other actors walk out? (I know — money makes their world go round). Why in fact does anyone watch these programs? (I may not really want the answer to that.) Why do advertisers pay to be in those commercial breaks? (oh yes: because people watch.) And what exactly is going on in the minds of those who write and produce and air such programs?  Doesn’t anyone in television-land realize that they‘re presenting violence against women as entertainment?

Or worse still, do they realize it very well?

No, I’m not saying that such programs create rapists and murderers, or that they present rape as okay.  Their ostensible focus is on the horror of rape, and at least on the surface, they seem to be raising consciousness of how brutal a violation it is.

Beneath the surface, though, there’s a deeply creepy fascination with rape, one that feels darkly voyeuristic.  So what I am saying is that such programs are a very visible part of a world-wide culture that still does not take rape with full seriousness — a culture that still doesn‘t register it for what it is:  not “sexual assault” nor “sex crime,” but brutality.  Rape is not about sex; it’s about brutalizing women.

There has to be someone out there who is as pissed as I am at this but with far better organizing skills.  Someone who can get at those who make such programs where it really hurts:  not in their balls, but in their pocketbooks.  Someone who can create a campaign to pressure advertisers to stop supporting programs that use violence against women as entertainment.

Imagine a boycott of the goods and services of all such advertisers.  Imagine stickers pasted on toilet paper and antacids and “feminine-care” products in supermarkets saying “This product pays for rape as entertainment.”  Imagine the publicity, the “bad PR,” the panic this would induce among directors of marketing.  They’d cave.

What Mandy Patinkin did, we all need to do. We all need to walk out on this sleaze.

 

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File under: ugliness, women | Tagged: Tags: advertising, boycott, Criminal Minds, Law and Order, Mandy Patinkin, murder, prime-time TV, rape, sex crimes, violence against women | 8 Comments
  1. charlotteoften says:
    June 12, 2014 at 2:39 pm

    In my inbox today, I received a Youtube video from the Campaign for Truth & Justice in Sri Lanka in support of their Stop Torture campaign, and I was very puzzled by their “public relations.”

    In Sri Lanka, women and girls are raped and tortured with impunity by members of the military police, and they have no legal recourse.

    Cara Delevingne, a very pretty, blond actress, performed a dramatic reading for the Campaign during which she read a Tamil woman’s actual account of her own torture and gang rape. There was a warning on the video stating it may be very upsetting to watch.

    That she’s pale and blond while Tamil women are dark was a little disconcerting at first, but I figured this is about human rights, after all. Why discriminate against blonds?

    But did she really have to be NUDE to make this reading persuasive?

    No doubt, Levingne was sincerely trying to help Tamil women. But again, where do we draw the line between censorship and titillation?
    http://youtu.be/IFWkciRKPYc

  2. Nuzhat says:
    June 12, 2014 at 8:26 pm

    Sad Lesley, that people like us who’d protest against the media projection of this atrocity, are termed ‘prudes’, here in India. As I mentioned in your previous post on this topic, respect to women is not being ingrained in our society at all.
    I thought my country tops the list in this sphere, but it’s sad to see this atrocity being almost ‘glorified’ for public view all around the world.
    A minister in our Parliament was ridiculed for asking to put a stop to such television serials, or films which can in a sense aggravate, rather than curb this spreading menace.
    The most stringent of action is to be taken at all levels. And yes, the first step is to ban this ridiculous exposure of violence through visuals.
    Nuzhat.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      June 13, 2014 at 9:32 am

      Two things about censorship, Nuzhat: first, it doesn’t work — it just drives things underground — and second, whoever does the censoring is liable to start censoring many other things.
      Plus, I find the phrase “respect for women” problematic. It’s been co-opted by religious fundamentalists and conservative politicians, who take it for granted that women are somehow lesser and therefore need to be set apart as a matter of ‘honor,’ of men protecting “their” women. In other words, such professed respect is not respect at all. It still sees half the world’s population as a lesser class of humanity, and implies that respect is a gift instead of a basic human right. Try turning it around and advocating “respect for men” and you’ll see what I mean.

  3. Nuzhat says:
    June 13, 2014 at 8:53 pm

    Sure, respect should come naturally, but it is eluding the warped and complicated Indian family system. Barring a few so called ‘literate’ of the society, the family ‘honour’ is the most protected of virtues here. Hence the differentiation between the male and female values, esp.in bringing up the girl child, is ingrained in the mindset. And the debased female sex remains so. There are so many aspects of it, that it can only leave you disillusioned.
    Yes, there’s no defining the boundary of censorship, but at least our senses can be saved from the very explicit, to which these visuals resort to.
    Nuzhat.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      June 14, 2014 at 11:57 am

      I hear you, Nuzhat. It’s a long battle that in many ways and many places has still only just begun. What encourages me is that fact: that it has indeed begun, however long it takes.

  4. Fatma Kalkan says:
    June 15, 2014 at 9:38 pm

    Hollywood uses women in every abusive way possible in my opinion Lesley. They show women as a sexual object to play with, beet up, sexually abused, tortured etc. this way they brain wash women that they are not valuable! They are powerless! Not to be respected since young age. Girls lose self respect as a result they become victim of predator style man. They accept the role Hollywood gives them in their life. Do you think after all this pre-conditioning there will be many women will be on the same page with you? I doubt it ! I feel that in this country girls are been wasted by this society.

  5. Tea-mahm says:
    June 16, 2014 at 8:27 am

    Yes, Lesley — This abuse is under so many layers as we turn to the criminal shows as a way of relaxing. Hardly notice the reality that is being offered over and over. Thanks for bringing this glitzy darkness to the surface! Tamam

  6. thecausticsoda says:
    July 29, 2014 at 6:11 am

    I think so many of these disturbing trends seen in our society come from how sexually repressed we are all made to feel. The more we silence natural human inclinations for contact with others, the more these same inclinations will begin to manifest themselves in darker ways, be that a fascination with rape and sexual abuse on television or with the increasingly extreme forms of pornography being made readily available online.

The Antidote

Posted June 9th, 2014 by Lesley Hazleton

The video is chaotic.  It shows a woman being stripped, tossed around, hit, kicked, held down, penetrated, beaten into unconsciousness by a mob in Cairo.  It’s described in this New York Times report, which avoids any link to the video itself.  In fact the original YouTube upload has been deleted.  Deleting it, however, is just another way of trying to cover it up.  As I write, this one is still active.  And yes, you are warned, it’s brutal.  As all rape is.

I know that those who read this blog, men and women alike, will be incapable of watching these couple of minutes with anything but horror.  But I also know that part of the reason it went viral when first posted is that there are men out there who are turned on by it.

Just the thought of that makes me want to gag.  As does the boys-will-be-boys response to it from an Egyptian TV host, who said, with a stupid giggle:  “They are happy.  The people are having fun.”

This isn’t “just” an Egyptian problem.  Or a Nigerian or Somali or Brazilian or Turkish or Italian or Swedish or Indian or Pakistani one.  My first association was with last year’s photo of an unconscious near-naked girl being lugged around by wrists and ankles, like a carcass, by high-school rapists in apple-pie Steubenville, Ohio.

This sickness infects some men, but affects every woman.  Yes, all women.  The Twitter hashtag #YesAllWomen took off in response to the misogynistic shooting rampage in Santa Barbara, California two weeks ago, and here’s the formidably intelligent Rebecca Solnit on what it means.

Solnit was in Seattle last week talking about her new book, Men Explain Things To Me, and when she mentioned her unease at finding herself alone on an elevator at night with a strange man, there was a lone weird laugh from a man behind me in the audience.  It wasn’t clear what he found so funny.  Perhaps he simply couldn’t understand this kind of unease.  But every woman can.  It’s the year 2014, and yet it’s still not “wise” for a woman to go down a dark street at night, or ride in an empty subway car, or walk in the woods.  What was most remarkable about Wild, Cheryl Strayed’s account of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, was not the length or the difficulty of the hike, but the fact that she was a woman walking alone.  If she had been male, there would have been no book to be written.

It’s absurd that the onus is still on women to avoid being subjected to violence.  One way and another, we are told to avoid this, avoid that, take care, take karate classes, be on the alert, be afraid.  Don’t go out at night, say some.  Stay home, lock yourselves in, adopt the behavioral equivalent of a chador.  (Don’t go out at night?  An equally rational ‘solution’ would instead be to tell men not to go out at night.)

But there’s an antidote.  And it comes from men — men who really do respect women, and who know that to remain silent in the face of woman-hatred is only to give it free rein.  As former president Jimmy Carter put it in A Call to Action, violence against women is not only a woman’s issue;  it affects us all, and the only way to win this battle is to work together.  I take heart from this photo that artist D.K.Pan posted on his Facebook page after the Santa Barbara massacre.  Women are finally speaking out;  we need more men like Jimmy Carter and D.K.Pan to speak out with us.

dkpan-yesallmen

 

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File under: ugliness, war, women | Tagged: Tags: #YesAllMen, #YesAllWomen, Cairo, Cheryl Strayed, D.K.Pan, Jimmy Carter, rape, Rebecca Solnit, USBC, YouTube | 6 Comments
  1. lavrans123 says:
    June 9, 2014 at 7:13 pm

    I don’t know where to go with this sort of behavior. I see it celebrated in so many ways- our entire sport culture (anti-culture?) promotes it with the objects. Music videos.

    I stopped to get coffee and was taken aback to find the barrista wearing nothing but lingerie.

    All the power structures in the world celebrate their ascension to the rank of power as being elevated to a place where others are objects.

    And that’s what it comes down to, that’s where the trickle winds up- at the point where that is no longer a person, but an object. That’s the same method that we use to teach our children to torture and kill people; make those people an “other” that isn’t human, or that one should do these things to. The “other” is central to all the religions, and is how they maintain their long-lasting violence.

    The mere existence of police forces creates violence. They promote rape as directly as the judges do; by taking the responsibility from people to act human, and making it a law and then placing anyone who breaks the law (or pushes it, or bends it) in an “other” category.

    So, we know that the rapes in Egypt have nothing to do with any collapse in police forces and everything to do with collapses in social cohesion. We know that religious fanaticism makes rape a victimless crime that has no accountable person but the woman.

    I just don’t see it happening without removing the governments and the police and the judges and religious certainty… But maybe I’m just upset.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      June 9, 2014 at 7:32 pm

      Thanks for the touch of irony at the end there, Lavrans! Appreciated. Yes indeed, women had enough of men telling us we’re “just upset.” Good to see some men have had enough of it too. — L.

  2. Nuzhat says:
    June 9, 2014 at 9:05 pm

    Here in India the onslaught of rape news is increasing with staggering regularity, making its acceptance with apathy, a chilling reality among the young. This has sadly become a case of “crying wolf” once too many a times.
    Outrage, protests, and then just ‘throwing up hands’ in an act of helplessness by authorities, has made these gruesome news items into momentary coverages in papers and television.
    Wonder if rapid capital punishment in such cases will deter the rest of the perpetrators. There has to be a stopping of this carnage with the help of males, whose actions against their fellow “evil” males should at least deter this unforgivable trait of disrespect towards women. Men should hold talks, men should garner support of their own, and yes! men can help in restoring the dignity of women throughout the world.
    Show your brawn and worth in the right place Man!!

    Nuzhat

  3. fatmakalkan says:
    June 10, 2014 at 9:17 am

    Dear Lesley, there are millions of women all over the world who are raped, beaten up, yet this horrible actions of man is not subject to capital punishment in man- made laws!
    Isn’t it?
    But if God made law of Torah or Quran was in effect in that countries this rapist would get capital punishment. There is a dark side of some evil man! It is a reality! And who created mankind knows how violent some evildoers can get towards women and girls. To prevent that God orders this evildoers to be punished maximum dose so other evil man that sold their soul to Satin ( Shaitan ) will be scared to harm women or children. God’s law looks harsh at first side but it discourage evildoers, prevents this violance get out of hand all over the world. One evil man gets killed because of his rape, murder yet millions of innocent women and girls, boys, being saved!

  4. Niloufer Gupta says:
    June 11, 2014 at 5:14 am

    Did you read about the two teenage girls who were raped ,after they were returning home from their local field ,in badaun ,U P , India , defecating- they did not have a loo in their village home-then lynched and tied upside down on the branches of a tree. The patriarchal repressed mindset has to be changed. But how ? Niloufer gupta india

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      June 11, 2014 at 8:09 am

      Yes, that was reported here, as was the building outrage that ensued. I hope it continues to build. And that many more men join women in expressing their outrage at it. After all, that perverse mindset is not only a danger to all women, but a deep insult to all good men.

“I Had No Idea…”

Posted May 20th, 2014 by Lesley Hazleton

macklemore2There’s a back story to this post.  I was asked to write it yesterday by Seattle’s alternative paper The Stranger.  Specifically, they asked for some “historical perspective” to singer Macklemore’s perverse twist on wardrobe malfunction onstage last Friday night, when he decided it’d be cool to perform in what’s sold in variety stores as a “Sheik/Fagin mask,” huge hook nose and all.

When the shit hit the fan, the Seattle-born Macklemore said his get-up was merely a “witch mask” and there was nothing anti-Semitic about it.  This morning, Tuesday, he finally issued an apology: “I had no idea,” he said.  And later this morning, despite huge numbers of comments on its coverage, The Stranger decided that “this story is over.”

I disagree, so am posting what I wrote right here:

———

For years I thought of myself as a wandering Jew. I moved not just between cities but between continents — London to Jerusalem to New York to Seattle. It was as though I fit the stereotype of the “rootless cosmopolitan.” Yet while I now seem to have become rooted after all, or at least as rooted as anyone whose houseboat floats on forty feet of water can be, I still can’t help thinking of rootless cosmopolitanism – anti-Semitic code for shiftless, untrustworthy, disloyal Jewishness — as a rather attractive existential state of being. And I still romanticize the idea of the wandering Jew, even though I know it began as an anti-Semitic legend in Christian Rome.

The story goes that a Jewish cobbler wouldn’t allow Christ to rest on his stoop during the trek to Golgotha, for which Christ condemned him to wander the world for eternity, with no rest. The Crusaders brought the legend back to England in the 12th century, where it was embroidered and expanded, and where this particular wandering Jew was born several centuries later. I’d be the only Jew in a Catholic convent school whose nuns referred to me as “the Hebrew girl” — with a certain pause before the word Hebrew, as though to emphasize that they were using a delicate euphemism. At least they refrained from telling me that I’d killed Christ (or given him no rest). Instead, they told me I was going to limbo, which seemed to be a kind of mezzanine between heaven and hell. To their horror, I kind of liked the idea of limbo.

This was only a few years after the end of World War Two. No, I’m not going to bring the six million in here; I have no desire to contribute to the obscenity of invoking their memory in support of current argument. My point is that despite its anti-Nazi stance, England was still deeply anti-Semitic. Which is not surprising given that it was where the “blood libel” first burst into murderous flame.

The blood libel was a medieval urban legend about Jews ritually slaughtering Christian boys and draining their blood to mix into Passover matzos (I kid you not). It spread like wildfire. Thousands of Jews were burned alive and otherwise massacred (and several boys declared saints) until Jews were expelled completely from British shores in 1290, to be allowed back only in 1655. In the light of which, Queen Isabella of Spain’s much better-known expulsion of Spain’s Jews in 1492, followed by that of all Spain’s Muslims thirty years later, seems pretty par for the course.

The two most infamous Jews in all of literature were created by Englishmen strong and true: Shylock in the 16th century and Fagin in the 19th. Both were portrayed as hunch-backed, lecherous-lipped, greedy-eyed, and of course, flamboyantly hook-nosed (a word that is inherently prejudicial — in Arab countries, it’s known as an eagle’s nose, and has traditionally been considered a sign of nobility). But neither Fagin nor Shylock were new creations. They were personifications of cartoon stereotypes that had become widespread with printing. The Nazi tabloid Der Stürmer didn’t invent the style, but it did help propagate it so widely that it still features on hysterically anti-Semitic websites from the USA to Poland to Yemen. It appeared in Egyptian schoolbooks and newspapers for years. And it turned up with an ironic twist in Denmark in 2006 with the publication of cartoons caricaturing Muhammad and all Muslims as terrorists, all with the “Sheik/Fagin nose” sold so amusingly as a mask at party stores. One Semite apparently looks pretty much like another.

Mild-mannered Seattle might seem a sweet respite from all this. Yet it was in Seattle that I first heard someone say “he Jewed me down” — quite blithely, with no self-consciousness, as though it were perfectly normal. Here that someone tried to make me her token Jew (“Wow, I’ve never had a Jewish friend before,” she said, and she didn’t after either). Here that a former Catholic schoolboy who didn’t realize I was Jewish (“that’s Jewish, you don’t look funny” went the old music-hall joke) assumed that I’d join him in changing the words of the carol “Joy to the world” to “Fuck all the Jews.” Here that I get a finger-pointing “you people” or “you Jews” as I’m held responsible for the actions of an Israeli government I criticize far more bitterly than those to whom the accusatory fingers belong. And it’s here, in the comments on The Stranger’s coverage of the Macklemore affair, that I find all the usual anti-Semitic code words: “touchy,” “thin-skinned,” and that old standby “pushy.”

Seattle is a young city, almost an ahistorical one compared to Jerusalem, and this ahistorical sense has allowed me to find calm writerly perspective on what happened halfway round the world in the Middle East of fifteen hundred, two thousand, even three thousand years ago. I’m immensely grateful for that. But could an absence of historical awareness just be another way of saying innocence? Or should that be ignorance?

When the subject of literary fraud came up in conversation not long ago, for instance, I mentioned the most infamous example of all – “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” And was stunned to realize that nobody had heard of this screed, which first surfaced in Russia in 1903. Purportedly the record of a meeting of leading Jews plotting to take over the world, it’s a classic demonstration of the ornate convolutions performed by the paranoid-conspiratorial mind, and has thus proved remarkably resilient to all evidence that it’s a fiction. Hitler made much use of it, of course, and America’s own tainted automotive titan Henry Ford had half a million copies printed and distributed in the 1920s. You can still find the full text on anti-Semitic websites, while print versions, complete with the usual hook-nosed illustrations, continue to sell steadily in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.

macklemorePerhaps Seattle is a bit less innocent after Macklemore’s now infamous twist on the idea of wardrobe malfunction. Or perhaps not. I opt to believe him when he says that he had no idea of the anti-Semitic stereotype, and can understand his initial defensiveness — nobody likes to have their unconscious biases paraded in public. But as he now acknowledges, it’s precisely this no-idea-ness that’s the problem. And that may be true for Seattle as well as for him.

We pride ourselves here on being progressive and tolerant. That’s part of our civic image. But tolerance is an ambiguous ideal. You only need to tolerate what – or whom — you don’t really accept. Stereotypes are inherent in the idea of tolerance, and until we can get beyond them, our proud progressiveness runs the risk of being… well,  just another mask.

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File under: Christianity, Judaism, ugliness | Tagged: Tags: "rootless cosmopolitan", "wandering Jew", anti-Semitism, Fagin, ignorance, innocence, Islamophobia, Macklemore, Seattle, Shylock, The Stranger | 45 Comments
  1. Mary Scriver says:
    May 20, 2014 at 6:13 pm

    Ask your nice Seattle liberals how they feel about Native Americans. Better yet, watch them walk down the sidewalk past a few guys with brown paper bags, having a great time.

    Prairie Mary

  2. candacedavis2013 says:
    May 20, 2014 at 7:10 pm

    Oh dear, the constant human need to define ourselves against some “other” that we feel free to denigrate and project on doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. Thank you Lesley for calling us on it.
    How disappointing a species we are sometimes. Gratitudes, ace

  3. shuaib says:
    May 20, 2014 at 8:57 pm

    its a great article based on facts ,its also a fact that western civilization couldn’t have been possible without contribution the Muslims n Jews

  4. Ross says:
    May 20, 2014 at 11:25 pm

    Perhaps, as you refer to the Blood Libel in England, you are aware of this historical document. preserved in the Child Ballads? FYI anyway:
    http://www.contemplator.com/child/sirhugh.html

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      May 21, 2014 at 8:10 am

      Hadn’t seen this one before. Thanks (I think!). The one I remember because it’s wicked short is this, from about the same time: “Repent, repent, oh England / Repent while thou hast space / And do not like the wicked Jews / Deny God’s proffered grace.”

  5. fatmakalkan says:
    May 21, 2014 at 7:39 am

    Wow Lesley! Growing up at Izmir, Turkey with Jewish neighbors I never heard of this stories. There was a mutual respect one another and I never heard any belittling remarks or this kind of stereotyping. My parents let me visit Jewish neighbors by myself during my childhood because they did not have children and they adored me. Every morning they greet each other from windows or at the entrance of our apartment. Jews lived in my city or country as a respected citizens. We never mix the two. Israilie governments wrong actions towards Palestenians and our Jewish citizens .

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      May 21, 2014 at 8:15 am

      Thanks, Fatma — I appreciate the positive counter-balance.

  6. pah says:
    May 21, 2014 at 1:33 pm

    whew! Leslie…i mean this could take days and months to discuss.
    i am just re-reading “Ivanhoe” and surely Sir Walter Scott also stereotyped Jews….The truth is, as Humans, we don;t seem to move on….in fact, in may ways, we are becoming more “medieval.”
    But, on the up side, Leslie, glad to see you back in the fray. take care

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      May 21, 2014 at 2:53 pm

      You’re right: there’d be hardly any English lit left if were to judge by anti-Semitism alone. I choose to still adore T.S.Eliot, for instance, despite lines like “The Jew squats on the windowsill / The rats are underneath the piles” (Gerontion). Sigh.

      • sweetk8 says:
        May 21, 2014 at 10:40 pm

        When I suggested to my English Lit professor that T.S. Elliot was anti-Semitic, she looked at me aghast, saying it wasn’t possible! She said no one had ever broached this idea to her… I could read his works then and find instances, why was I able to, and not her or anyone else?
        I enjoyed your article and hope it brings awareness to the countless who remain in the dark about racial, ethnic and religious bias.

  7. anolivedaily says:
    May 21, 2014 at 2:18 pm

    I feel a little torn reading this. First, I think you did an amazing job of explaining the history behind this whole ordeal. I think anyone, Macklemore included, would see how offensive the costume is after reading this. But I also think to myself, do I know any better? I didn’t know most of what you wrote about. It may seem crazy, but the reality is our schools teach us white American history. Every different nationality and race are left out of the text books, or only mentioned in relation to a white American topic. It really is a shame. There should be no way a person can get into their 20s and 30s and still be ignorant about these things, but what if they are never taught?

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      May 21, 2014 at 2:45 pm

      Excellent point about the mono-cultural focus of American education (which also accounts for American helplessness with world geography). There’s a parochialism behind all this that I find very disturbing.
      I guess my point with the brief historical tour was that I fell in love with the ideas of the wandering Jew and the rootless cosmopolitan before I knew their origins in anti-Semitism — i.e. biased ideas work their into our minds without us knowing it, let alone why. I should have made that clear. But I’m sure you recognized that “Sheik/Fagin” mask nevertheless for what it was.

  8. A.J. Valliant says:
    May 21, 2014 at 7:28 pm

    The man at one point had a debilitating cough syrup addiction and saw no issue with a straight white dude being the spokesman for the LGBT community’s relationship to hip-hop.

    “Sorry, I’m more than a little slow” is a shockingly plausible defense in his case.

  9. brinkling says:
    May 21, 2014 at 8:39 pm

    Great post!! I wasn’t aware of all the history.

    It’s sad that there’s still so much ignorance and prejudice in the world.

  10. simaroseblossom says:
    May 21, 2014 at 9:21 pm

    I definitely related to a lot of what you said. I feel like Macklemore had to have known and just wanted attention. It’s so insensitive t a people that have always been put on trial.

    • M2M says:
      May 22, 2014 at 1:48 am

      Like others I had no idea about the depth and history of these feelings. I remember asking what anti-semitism actually meant after Mel Gibson made the news – or rather where it came from. – as I struggle to comprehend that people can seem to decide to hate on an entire human ‘group’ without cause. So it seems to be a believing in old/urban stories and legends? Really? Incredible. How are practical men like Henry Ford or educated men like TS Elliot able to be drawn in by this nonsense? On the other hand I have been stabbed, axed, beaten and singled out for prejudice by members of my ‘own kind’ thanks to nothing more than an accent. So I do get it. People can be shallow, arrogant, ignorant…innocent?
      Great post, thanks.
      Al

  11. shek1na says:
    May 21, 2014 at 9:46 pm

    Much of the Jew hatred today comes from Islam and the Quran, but it is not the whole picture. We must admit that much hatred throughout history have come from the so-called Christians, the Catholic Church and the Lutherans. It is unfortunately the truth.

    (Let me remind you all of Pope Urban II’s speech when he started the very first crusade. All Jews they found on the way to Jerusalem to be killed without mercy).

    Where did the Nazis come from? Only one crazy man? If you investigate you will find that many SS officers had backgrounds in Catholicism […]

    But after the Holocaust the attitude of the Jews improved a lot. I hope it lasts. If you read the Bible, you will understand that Salvation comes from the Jews. No man took the life of Jesus, He gave it as a sacrifice for ALL sin.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      May 22, 2014 at 9:42 am

      On the other hand (and there are many hands here), this from the Quran (Sura 2, verse 62): “Surely they that believe, and those that follow the Jewish scriptures, and Christians, and Sabians — all who believe in God and the Day of Judgment, and do right — shall have their reward with their Lord. No fear shall be on them; neither shall they sorrow.”
      Plus of course the justly famous “To you your religion, to me mine.”

  12. Dani says:
    May 21, 2014 at 10:26 pm

    Brilliantly written.

    Thank you.

  13. rjjainrahul97 says:
    May 22, 2014 at 12:38 am

    I respect your relatively unbiased opinion and the fact that you respected Macklemore’s apologies and were open to the fact that people can make mistakes.

    Since my knowledge on the topic is nearly non-existent i will refrain from diving into the heart of the issue but I think we can say that there are a lot of things in the world and it is hard to keep track of all the symbolism. Also given what a commenter above (or is that below) said regarding the mono-cultural focus I guess we should consider giving a public apology by these stars as genuine for if nothing else, the relatively obscure topic became that little bit less obscure and may help in raising the issue and awareness hopefully in the right manner.

  14. awax1217 says:
    May 22, 2014 at 6:03 am

    I am a Jew. I married a Jew and had three Jewish children. I try hard not to be offended but it seems there something offensive in his actions. I believe people should think first and then no apology is needed.

  15. amelie88 says:
    May 22, 2014 at 10:23 am

    I’m from the suburbs of NYC so we have plenty of Jews here. But even as someone who grew up surrounded by Jews, I didn’t see the costume as anti-Semitic at first. I was just confused as to why Macklemore decided to wear a really ugly mask since it wasn’t Halloween. After seeing the reaction, I see it now in context and I understand. Though I probably would not have made the connection had a Jew not pointed it out to me. Like a commenter posted above, it is difficult to know what symbol may be offensive to others. It all depends on your personal experiences.

    I remember being very surprised when I first went to Spain to see that during Holy Week, all the men carrying the religious floats were decked out in what looked like the Ku Klux Klan uniform. As it turns out, the KKK appropriated that costume for their cause and it became a negative symbol here in the US. However in Spain they’ve been using that uniform for hundreds of years during their processions and it carries no negative association and is part of Catholic tradition. It’s still jarring for me to see, but the symbolism doesn’t have KKK connotation over there. Not sure if it’s in the same vein as Macklemore’s situation since he has lived in the US his whole life and should be more aware of these things. But it’s just a thought.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      May 22, 2014 at 11:02 am

      Thanks, Amelie — that’s an excellent and (in this context) wonderfully ironic example of the need for awareness not only of cultural context, but also of its history.

  16. SISI DA FIZ says:
    May 22, 2014 at 12:51 pm

    ROTFL

  17. Roxy Hathaway says:
    May 22, 2014 at 2:13 pm

    In this case ignorance is not bliss. He went down several notches in my esteem.

  18. Harry Underwood says:
    May 22, 2014 at 2:38 pm

    Reblogged this on World of Values and commented:
    A good post regarding Macklemore’s jarring appearance in a “Jewish costume”, and why the costume has a long and highly-bigoted history in Abrahamic religion. On point:

  19. Relatable XO says:
    May 23, 2014 at 1:20 am

    I enjoyed reading your post. You have great opinions and I agree Macklemore’s costume was a bit absurd, no matter what his goal or angle was. I think your opinion is a BIT broad, saying that Seattle is innocent/ignorant because of the people you have met. Well, I’m from Germany and people know that, and I have not once been called a Nazi whereas when I have travelled other places people aren’t afraid to make that “joke.” It depends who you surround yourself with. You will find innocent/ignorant people everywhere! Don’t let them get to you. They’re uneducated and have nothing better to do.

    Thanks for posting!

  20. Ethen Hunt says:
    May 23, 2014 at 1:43 am

    I spent last 2 hours reading your articles ! And must say: awseome website ! !

  21. Swiss-Ami-Mom says:
    May 23, 2014 at 4:08 am

    That he has has been known to dress in costume, and hang outside the venues with his fans in costume, I can honestly believe his intent was none other than what he stated. As a Jewish person myself AND a as a person that respects Macklemores work, I think this has been hyped out of control. If you listen to his music, his words of support for various walks of life, you would be gretting him with an apology. This is anti-semetic paranoia.

  22. syrbal-labrys says:
    May 23, 2014 at 1:03 pm

    I was horrified to recently read that the majority of younger Americans do not even know what “the Holocaust” means as a phrase. Shocking lack of history teaching…

  23. christiancontrarian says:
    May 24, 2014 at 6:30 pm

    A White guy who sings in a traditionally African-American style dressed as a Jewish man. Confused much?

  24. murphyji says:
    May 26, 2014 at 8:26 am

    Marginalising people for their religion, nationality, or cultural background is what sells copy, gets people elected and starts wars. In Britain a right wing political party is causing a feeding frenzy on immigration. This is no new event. History is full of examples of pea brained thinkers who have caused untold misery and death. Current world events, which I don’t need to list, focus on difference rather than similarity and look where that has led. So be grateful for dialogue giving the culprit an opportunity to review their act or statement which has caused offence, rather than filling the coffers of arms manufacturers and dealers.

  25. Author Catherine Townsend-Lyon says:
    May 26, 2014 at 9:19 am

    Great Post, but lets keep ‘It Real” as we all know when a band hits the stage? No matter what they are wearing, dressed up in, or masks or not, it’s “Entertainment” not downing on some group of people…..

    No matter what Macklemore does in a their show, lets remember, It’s A Show, not to be taken seriously. Give them break already. Their messages in their Music is really the point…… I still, and always will LUV them!

    Author, Catherine Lyon 🙂

  26. cerabellum says:
    May 29, 2014 at 11:04 am

    Interesting. As a British male 20yo I grew up with a lot of the anti-semitic nonsense without really associating it with Jewish people. I didn’t know any Jewish people but if I did, they would have just been normal friends. As I got older though I still laughed at Jewish jokes about money or whatnot. Just as I laughed at a tonne of un-pc jokes relating to race, gender, religion.

    The side of me which studies this knows the world would be a whole lot better if Israel had more power. That the Jewish population was 500 million rather than what… 40? but then, this kind of silly costume is what I would laugh at… Ok not in this context, maybe on Family guy but… It doesn’t change the fact I support Jewish people far more than Christians and FAR more than Muslims.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      May 29, 2014 at 1:36 pm

      But hey, Cerabellum, why would you “support” any one religious group as a whole, whether Jews, Christians, or Muslims? Maybe think about it a moment, and then ask if this isn’t another form of stereotyping…
      Plus you seem to have fallen into the trap of confusing Israel with Judaism. The Israeli government may present itself as representing all Jews, but I’m damned if it represents me, or the majority of Jews I know, or even half of Israeli Jews.

      • cerabellum says:
        May 29, 2014 at 2:30 pm

        Yes I do hear that as a consensus among Jewish people who don’t live in Israel. I am not a religious man so I don’t prefer religions based solely on their teachings. I prefer them on how they are implemented in communities – a function of social evolution.

        Christians a few hundred years ago were the epitome of regression and savagery. Now they just have a few pockets of extremists, all bark and no bite. Islam to this day envelops a country in darkness. I haven’t found a majority Muslim country so far which doesn’t implement some part of Sharia.

        This isn’t just about censoring opinions. It is about all kinds of horrible issues. Some extremely similar to Christianity a few hundred years ago, others a whole new species of evil. Marrying children, raping wives – treating women like property. Murdering minorities; gay people, atheists, bloggers and activists. murdering apostates despite their heritage being christian – it’s all about the men…

        Who knows whether Islam will evolve to the extent Christianity has – I hope it does. But I sympathize greatly with Israel. By all accounts not the most rational, morally sounds country in the world but… To be surrounded with such hatred, often directed at exterminating Jews as well… I could never understand that feeling.

        I guess Jewish people have just been the most innocuous, placid religious influence on my life. I like it that way 🙂

        • Lesley Hazleton says:
          May 29, 2014 at 6:37 pm

          “Innocuous and placid”? — I wish! But…
          Sometimes I fear Israel is well on the way to becoming a kind of Jewish Saudi Arabia, with fanatic believers dictating a distorted hypernationalist “death-to-Arabs” form of extreme Judaism. No religion has a monopoly on either “truth” or ugliness.
          And another “but”:
          Sharia is not the monolithically repressive system you seem to think it is. As Boyd Tomkin wrote in The Independent re Sadakat Kadri’s wonderful history of sharia, ‘Heaven on Earth’ (an ironic title, of course), “the kinds of sharia now trumpeted by theocrats and militants always owe more to human arrogance than to divine inspiration.”
          The problem here is the confusion of militant extremist forms of a religion with the whole of that religion, whatever religion we may be talking about.

          • cerabellum says:
            May 30, 2014 at 3:44 am

            That is interesting – I don’t know much about Israel to be honest save a couple of documentaries. It would be mortifying if Israel took such a path but given Jewish history, I guess anything’s possible…

            As for Islam, divine inspiration can only get you so far, I agree. Although I have read the Koran and it is a shocking book. Of course a lot of it is just repetition and the divinity of Allah but… There are teachings in there that frankly are pure evil. Now this isn’t to say the old testament – even to some extent the new – doesn’t have shocking things in it.

            But it certainly plays out differently in today’s world and that is, as a non religious person, what i am interested in. What I see is that nearly all Islamic majority country has psychological and physical abuse of women built into society. That an influx of immigrant from places like Saudi and Pakistan into Sweden has directly resulted in Sweden now having the second highest rape per ca-pita in the world. Highest in Europe.

            I have the same view as you on Israel turning into some rabid, foaming mouthed anti all Muslim country but… Given all the surrounding caliphates have a similar stance toward them, I don’t think I would see things any better or act better.

          • Lesley Hazleton says:
            May 30, 2014 at 8:08 am

            “Surrounding caliphates”? “A couple of documentaries”? Cerabellum, I think it’s time to do some serious reading so that you can avoid coming to weird, uninformed, and unwarranted conclusions. You might start with actually reading the Bible, since the Quran is a pussycat by comparison. And by looking at exactly where that Swedish-rape statistic comes from, since it sounds like racist urban legend to me.

      • anonyme13 says:
        June 8, 2014 at 1:20 pm

        I am sorry Lesley, but you are wrong! Now when somebody attack Israel, it is a disguised anti-Semitism, flat out. Some people are so ignorant about Israel, but they love to feel sorry for Palestinians. They have no idea that “Palestine” and “palestinian” the words are a modern invention, that jews bought the land in Israel with hard money, and that the Arab Lands are huge and Israel is the tiniest country possible. That sixty years later, the so called palestinians, for political reasons, still leave in refugee camps. How about all the refugees from Arab countries, were are they, my family included(from algeria, out of Spain from the time of Isabella)? I will tell you why you can’t find any jewish refugees, because they started to rebuilt their lives as soon as they were expelled!

        • Lesley Hazleton says:
          June 8, 2014 at 5:19 pm

          It takes some chutzpah to talk about ignorance so ignorantly!
          Palestine is a very ancient name, used by the Greeks, the Romans, and the Byzantines. Though you are right that Palestinians still live in the refugee camps for political reasons — because Israel has confiscated their land.

  27. venuscallipyge says:
    May 30, 2014 at 6:47 pm

    Fellow Seattleite here. I’ve noticed Seattle’s subtle racism on many occasions, first when I was living in the CD and being told several times I would get raped or stabbed for being “white” if I walked home alone often like I did, later I saw the disproportionate treatment by police toward those of color on the street when I was caught up in my active drug addiction. I’ve been told that Seattle police are more racist than those in many other urban centers, and I believe it. If the general population here were less prejudiced, the behavior of our police force would not be countenanced like it is now and in the past. I am aware that I am privileged because I look white, and I don’t take that for granted… I do my best to counter the unjust discrimination I see around me, whether for a person’s color, age, sexual identity, creed, religion, and so on. Thank you for your thoughtful post.

  28. epicrevieweradmin says:
    June 3, 2014 at 1:28 am

    Let me think about this, a white guy who does rap and is looking like a jewish guy……………………..

  29. terzahcain says:
    June 5, 2014 at 11:24 pm

    I have entirely too much to say in response to this wonderful article and all the thoughtful comments. May I post a pingback link to your article in an upcoming post on my site?

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      June 6, 2014 at 8:52 am

      Sure — it’s public domain. — L. (Just remember to link and/or attribute.)

Guns, Cash, and Votes

Posted April 18th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

As my friend Charles Mudede noted, these graphs say it all  (courtesy of The Sunlight Foundation):

nraelection$

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File under: ugliness, US politics | Tagged: Tags: election spending, gun control, gun lobby, NRA, US Senate | 5 Comments
  1. Zarina Sarfraz says:
    April 18, 2013 at 6:46 pm

    Please see the real meaning in modern English language as the right to actively use arms in a bonafide[declared war] on behalf of ones country NOT AS A MURDERING OF INNOCENTS! I think that mental & Physical tests are urgently required for all senators before they are sworn in ;& a suitably strict control on murdering”plots”used for films & cartoons! Death is no joke,& cannot be repaired ZS

  2. Gustav Hellthaler says:
    April 19, 2013 at 2:05 pm

    How a civilization declines:

    Ammo
    Amass
    A must
    A massacre

    Gus

  3. shah says:
    May 4, 2013 at 12:43 am

    you should read this article…7 errors you have made in your book has been pointed out!. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/qasim-rashid/7-things-about-prophet-mu_b_2563008.html

  4. Jerry M says:
    May 5, 2013 at 5:39 pm

    @shah

    You should re-read the article you reference. It doesn’t say the author made 7 errors. Rashid titles his column “7 Things About Prophet Muhammad: A Clarification ”

    2. He married up — and for love.

    Hazleton accurately summarizes Prophet Muhammad’s marriage to Hazrat Khadija, but I offer two minor matters of clarification. …

    3. His first reaction to becoming a Prophet? Doubt and despair.

    Hazleton accurately states Prophet Muhammad’s fear upon the Angel Gabriel’s appearance to him. …”

    On number 7. the post says “Hazleton is incorrect both when she states that “he died without designating a successor,” and that Prophet Muhammad “paved the way for the divisiveness between Sunni and Shiite that persists today.” …

    The fact that things didn’t deteriorate for 30 years, a very short time given the slow evolution of things in the ancient world, doesn’t prove anything. I would give Ms Hazelton a pass on this

    So, she is wrong about some things, but not 7.

    • shah says:
      May 6, 2013 at 7:52 am

      well khadija (R.A) was the one who proposed marraige to our prophet (pbuh) seeing his honesty,kindness and his caring attitude towards the needy & poor..love happened much later….and trust me 30 yrs is not a short period of time. 🙂

U.S. Held Hostage

Posted April 18th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

Could it have been clearer?  The United States is being held hostage by the National Rifle Association, which has enough senators in its deep pockets to block even the most basic attempt at meaningful gun control.

President Obama called the Senate’s capitulation yesterday “pretty shameful.”  Make that totally, horrendously shameful.  Just two days after carnage in Boston, the US Senate had not had enough death.  Instead, it ensured that there’ll be more Newtowns, more kids mown down, more “senseless tragedy.” In fact the Senate has essentially written the script for it.

Since a few readers seem to think that I get “too angry” at times — Zen meditation never was my thing — I’d like to point out that the New York Times praised Obama for his evident anger, and that the lead editorial in today’s paper is very close to my current anger level.  Titled “The Senate Fails Americans,” here’s how it begins:

For 45 senators, the carnage at Sandy Hook Elementary School is a forgotten tragedy. The toll of 270 Americans who are shot every day is not a problem requiring action. The easy access to guns on the Internet, and the inevitability of the next massacre, is not worth preventing.

Those senators, 41 Republicans and four Democrats, killed a bill on Wednesday to expand background checks for gun buyers.  It was the last, best hope for meaningful legislation to reduce gun violence after a deranged man used semiautomatic weapons to kill 20 children and six adults at the school in Newtown, Conn., 18 weeks ago. A ban on assault weapons was voted down by 60 senators; 54 voted against a limit on bullet magazines.

Patricia Maisch, who survived a mass shooting in Tucson in 2011, spoke for many in the country when she shouted from the Senate gallery: “Shame on you.”

Newtown, in the end, changed nothing; the overwhelming national consensus to tighten a ridiculously lax set of gun laws was stopped cold. That’s because the only thing that mattered to these lawmakers was a blind and unthinking fealty to the whims of the gun lobby.

Polls show that an ever-increasing majority of Americans — 86% just last week –want at least proper background checks for those who buy guns online or at gun shows, yet the Senate denied even this most elementary precaution. Which means that this Senate does not represent the will of the people. Only that of the NRA.

So here’s how the New York Times editorial ends:

It’s now up to voters to exact a political price from those who defied the public’s demand, and Mr. Obama was forceful in promising to lead that effort. Wednesday was just Round 1, he said; the next step is to replace those whose loyalty is given to a lobby rather than the people.

“Sooner or later, we are going to get this right,” he said. “The memories of these children demand it, and so do the American people.”

Politicians think we’ll forget. Let’s not. Senators are for re-election in 2014, and again in 2016, and again in 2018.  And our responsibility as citizens is to make sure that every single one of those nay-saying bums who have sold their souls in order to stay in office is booted right on out of office.

In the meantime, I suggest they sponsor a mental-health-care bill, since one is evidently badly needed — for themselves:

gun_mentalhealth

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File under: ugliness, US politics | Tagged: Tags: elections, gun control, New York Times editorial, Newtown, NRA, Obama, Senate | 2 Comments
  1. annie minton says:
    April 18, 2013 at 1:15 pm

    when will they ever learn?

  2. Jerry M says:
    April 22, 2013 at 8:58 am

    The NRA has strayed from being an organization that promoted marksmanship to a lobby for the gun industry. As America has moved off the farms, gun ownership has declined (at least the percentage of household having a gun). So, there is a need to encourage gun ownership in households that never would consider having a gun. What is disturbing is that the NRA has opposed any effort at stopping gun violence. Now they are using false ideas to oppose further background checks. The current background checks law was never intended to find people for prosecution, after all most of the time the person requesting the background check isn’t a police officer. So, the fact the current law only leads to a handful of prosecutions is being used by the right to stop any attempt at improving the law.

Tragedy Or Terrorism? Really?

Posted April 16th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

Conservatives are angry at President Obama’s initial avoidance of the word “terrorism” for yesterday’s bomb attack at the Boston Marathon.  (Today he finally used the word.)  I’m angry at him for that too, but for a very different reason.

Obviously I know as little as you do about who made and placed those two bombs, but it was clear from the get-go that this was a terrorist attack. That is, a planned, concerted attack on civilians, in a crowded space, designed to kill and maim as many people as possible at random, and to spread fear and panic.

So why avoid calling it what it was?  The reason given by White House insiders yesterday was that they didn’t yet know who did it and why.

Excuse me?  What exactly does that reasoning imply? That the bomber’s identity defines his actions? That “domestic” terrorism is somehow less fatal than “foreign” terrorism? That if the bomber turns out to be anything other than Muslim, then it’s not terrorism?

A similar tack was taken by many liberal online commenters. “Let’s hold off on determining if this is terrorism until we know more,” they kept saying.  But it seems to me that their caution was based on the same underlying assumption — that what they meant was “Let’s hold off on calling it terrorism unless the bomber turns out to be Muslim.”

In effect, they were acting as a kind of mirror image to Fox News, where the instant assumption was that since this was terrorism, the perpetrator could only be Muslim.

So to use one of Obama’s own favorite phrases, let me be absolutely clear:

If the bomber turns out to be a lily-white right-wing Christian whose ancestors came off the Mayflower, he is still a terrorist.  As clearly a terrorist as the stock image of the jihadi in a suicide vest.

Moreover, this was not “a tragedy,” as Obama called it — thus prompting countless television reporters to fall back on stock phrases like “a tragic day” and “this terrible tragedy.”  This was murder.  Mass murder.

“Tragedy” implies that it could not have been avoided, that it was somehow fated.  That was the whole point of ancient Greek drama, where the idea of tragedy was invented.  But terrorism is deliberate.  It’s a cold-blooded decision made by humans (or rather, people who pass for human).  And to call it tragedy is to imply one way or another that the perpetrator is somehow not quite responsible for his actions.  (Yes, almost certainly ‘his’ and not ‘her.’)

Of course I realize that Obama probably decided on “tragedy” out of the earnest desire to avoid spreading panic and thus terrorizing more people.  That’s part of the role of president, I guess:  the national reassurer.  But I was not reassured.  Sure, his first response beat continuing to read from “My Pet Goat” by several miles, but that’s setting the bar about as low as it can get.

The so-called “war on terror” has been a disaster for the US not least because even when it happens right under our noses, we still can’t recognize that it’s not who does it that makes terrorism, or why.  It’s what they do.

Whether they’re political or religious; white or brown or black; left-wing or right-wing; “domestic” or “foreign” or any combination of all of the above — if they target, kill, maim, and terrorize civilians, they’re terrorists.

And may every one of them — whether in Boston, in New York, in Oklahoma City, in Atlanta, in Beirut, in Jerusalem, in Baghdad, in Kabul, or in Benghazi — rot in whatever conception of hell you care to name.

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File under: Islam, ugliness, US politics | Tagged: Tags: "war on terror", bombing, Boston Marathon, Muslim, Obama, terrorism, tragedy | 12 Comments
  1. Yoni Ploni says:
    April 16, 2013 at 10:10 am

    Stop being so knee-jerk reactive, and angry. The word ‘terrorist’ has become so linked in Western minds with the Middle and Far East, it is a wise person who chooses words carefully to prevent listeners from vigilante actions.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      April 16, 2013 at 11:19 am

      Um, whose knee is jerking here?

      • Rishad Quazi says:
        April 17, 2013 at 10:43 am

        Exactly. It’s time to “unlink” it then. Is your fear then that if the President had called this out as a terrorist action, then it would have sparked a wave of vigilantism across the country?

  2. Kim P. says:
    April 16, 2013 at 1:55 pm

    To be fair, though, if the perpetrator turns out to be a hallucinating whackjob who planted the bombs because the voices told him it was necessary to destroy the alien zombie pod people, that wouldn’t in fact be terrorism.

    While I don’t dispute that US media are all too prone to assume that only jihadis count as terrorists, I think it’s reasonable to refrain from firmly and officially labeling any criminal attack as “terrorism” until we know for sure that it WAS terrorism: i.e., an attack specifically and sanely intended to kill random innocent people for the purpose of dismaying and demoralizing those whom the perpetrators consider ideological enemies.

    And in fact, the administration is still refraining (rightly, I think) from conclusively attaching such a label to this attack. What Obama said in the linked article was merely that “given what we know about what took place, the F.B.I. is investigating it as an act of terrorism” and that the evidence points toward its being terrorism. But until we know who did it and why, we can’t conclude for certain that it IS terrorism, so I don’t think there’s anything wrong with not being in a rush to call it by that name.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      April 16, 2013 at 2:52 pm

      Well argued, Kim, and if I turn out to be wrong, I’ll apologize. The signs do all point to an act of terrorism, but even if it was a hallucinating whackjob, do we then call it a tragedy? The Newtown shooting massacre of five- and six-year-olds was repeatedly called a tragedy, but again, that was the wrong word, one that allowed the killer to evade real responsibility — and the rest of us to sit back as though there was nothing to be done, which helps explain the failure to pass much stronger gun laws.
      A question, then: could withholding judgment enable us to take the easier way out, and settle for resignation? Is there a dangerously permeable line between non-judgement and passivity? I ask because I’m not sure.

      • Klicrai says:
        April 17, 2013 at 11:37 am

        From what I understand a mass murder carried out with the intention of furthering a political (or other) goal is terrorism, however a mass murder carried out just so some sicko can get his jollies is not. It is murder, it is a tragedy, it is a lot of things – but not terrorism. I’ve come to believe it is important to make the distinction because there is something especially contemptible in the use (or even attempted use) of violence to make a point. Also, in the case of terrorism there is something more substantial (a group, a philosophy) to act against – we are left with the feeling that there is a “them” to be fought and rightly so. In the case of a random sicko killing people for no real reason, on the other hand, there is no “them” – no philosophy or political aim to strive against in response. The filth who killed those children at Sandy Hook, for example – there wasn’t a group to work against or a philosophy to decry – just a random horrible act that still has no real explanation. To call such acts “terrorism” is to cast an unrealistically wide net, bringing us to a place where we feel like we should, for example, incarcerate every person with a mental illness so as to prevent another Sandy Hook. I don’t see it as passivity, I see it as recognizing where our efforts will be effective – and where they will not.

  3. Muhammad Shukri bin Yaacob says:
    April 16, 2013 at 6:16 pm

    A very apt and sensible comment.Terrorism act does not premised on religion or race but the act itselt.Love your writing very much.Allah blessed you.

  4. Jerry M says:
    April 16, 2013 at 6:25 pm

    In US usage yesterday’s event was a tragedy.

    http://www.thefreedictionary.com/tragedy

    trag•e•dy (ˈtrædʒ ɪ di)

    n., pl. -dies.
    1. a lamentable, dreadful, or fatal event or affair; calamity; disaster: a family tragedy.

    I am looking at older dictionaries and I would still think tragedy would apply. There is nothing in the way the word is defined that absolves the actor or actors of guilt. (I don’t normally use online dictionaries but I am to lazy to carry the books to my computer and type it all out myself.

    As far as the unwillingness to call it terrorism, I would agree with you there.

  5. Kim P. says:
    April 16, 2013 at 7:24 pm

    I think the terminology is different in different contexts, at least as far as I can interpret the conventional usage. For the semi-official “standard reference” for such an event, we should use a non-euphemistic but non-controversial term: e.g., “the Newtown school shootings” or “the Newtown massacre”, “the Boston Marathon bombings”, “the 9/11 attacks”, etc.

    “Tragedy” can be used to describe such an event’s emotional impact (“the Boston Marathon bombings turned this into a day of tragedy”), but should not be part of the “standard reference”, except perhaps for an accident or suicide. We might speak of “the JFK, Jr. tragedy” but shouldn’t say “the Newtown tragedy” or “the Oklahoma City tragedy”.

    I agree that too “soft” a vocabulary, like “the Newtown tragedy”, can seem to imply passively accepting or even condoning an atrocity. But too “hard” a vocabulary, especially shortly after an event, can seem to imply rushing to judgement. Remember the people who immediately started talking about “the Flight 587 terror attack” before it was determined that the plane had crashed due to operator error? We don’t want to be those people. I’m all in favor of bluntly calling the Boston Marathon bombings an “act of terrorism” when and if (and there’s little doubt in my mind that it will be “when” rather than “if”) it’s clearly determined that it WAS an act of terrorism.

    Recently found your writings via a cite by Richard Seymour, btw; very impressed!

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      April 17, 2013 at 9:56 am

      Interesting analysis of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ vocabulary, Kim. I agree — the terms we choose define not only how we think, but also how we act and react. The word ‘tragic’ seems to have been demeaned by thoughtless overuse and rendered into a kind of intellectual and emotional placebo (much like the word ‘spiritual’). And the word ‘terrorism’, in the US especially, has come for far too many people to be shorthand for ‘Muslim terrorism,’ which is why I wrote what I did.

      Didn’t know Seymour had cited me. I’m kind of impressed too. Presumably re Hitchens? Will check out ‘Unhitched.’

  6. chakaoc says:
    April 17, 2013 at 2:58 am

    Interesting semantic arguments – I am sure that equating ‘terrorist’ to someone of Middle Eastern birth or Muslim faith goes on in the media, and has spilled over to the public (non-sense)ibility.
    If someone is mentally unstable does that mean they can’t terrorize? Seems like that happened yesterday no matter who did it…

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      April 17, 2013 at 9:59 am

      True, but I think this is far more than a matter of semantics — it’s a matter of how we think, and thus of how we act.

Morsi’s Anti-Semitism

Posted January 16th, 2013 by Lesley Hazleton

I wish I could say that Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi’s anti-Semitism surprised me half as much as it seemed to surprise The New York Times.  (“Egyptians should nurse our children and grandchildren on hatred” for Jews and Zionists, Morsi declared in a videotaped speech three years ago. “They have been fanning the flames of civil strife wherever they were throughout history. They are hostile by nature.”)

But the rampant use of anti-Semitic imagery in political rhetoric both in Egypt and in other Muslim countries (“apes,” “pigs,” “bloodsuckers,” said Morsi) is hardly news.  It comes right out of the convoluted paranoia of The Protocols of the Elders of the Zion, which far too many Egyptians still take for fact instead of the fictional fake it was long ago proved to be.  What concerns me is how it seeps into even the best-intentioned minds, in far less obvious but nonetheless insidious ways.

Consider, for instance, an exchange like this one, which I seem to have had a number of times over the past several years:

— “What do the Jews think they’re doing in Gaza?”

— “The Jews?  All Jews?  Which Jews?”

— “The Israelis, of course.”

— “Which Israelis?”

— “Well, the Israeli government.”

— “So why do you not say ‘the Israeli government’ instead of ‘the Jews’?”

This is what you might call the low-level shadow of anti-Semitism.  My interlocutors (I love/hate that word) would never dream of using Morsi’s inflammatory language of hatred.  They’re liberal and moderate American Muslims (some are believing mosque-goers, others self-described agnostics or atheists).  And yet even they are not always immune to that conflation of politics and ethnicity, of Israeli policy and Jewishness.

Each time such an exchange occurs, there’s a pause in the conversation — a moment of discomfort as my interlocutor (that word again!) realizes what I’m responding to.  And then comes a nod of acknowledgement, one that takes considerable courage, since none of us appreciate being called to account.  Call it a small moment of sanity.

I recognize this because it’s mirrored in Israel, where talk of “the Arabs” — a generalization as bad as “the Jews” — veers more and more not just into outright racism, but into a kind of gleeful pride in that racism, as shown in David Remnick’s long piece on “Israel’s new religious right” in the current New Yorker.

Israeli politicians have taken to presenting themselves as defenders of “the Jewish people,” regularly using “Jew” as a synonym for “Israeli,” even though — or because — over 20% of Israeli citizens are Muslim or Christian Arabs.  They do this deliberately, of course, just as the Morsi-type anti-Semitic rhetoric is deliberate.  The emotional resonance of “Jew” is deeper and far older than that of “Israeli,” and thus far more useful as a carrier of both covert and overt pride and prejudice.

As a Jew I find this political claim to represent me both insulting and obnoxious.  Like an increasing number of American Jews, I’m appalled by the policies of the Netanyahu government (let alone those of its predecessors), and at the development of what has clearly become an apartheid regime.  I deeply resent being lumped together with the Netanyahus of this world — and I equally deeply resent the attempt by the Netanyahus of this world to lump themselves in with me and define my Jewishness.  How dare they?  And how dare Morsi?

I’d ask “have they no shame?” but the answer is obvious.

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File under: Islam, Judaism, Middle East, sanity, ugliness | Tagged: Tags: anti-Semitism, David Remnick, Egypt, Israel, Morsi, Netanyahu, racism | 9 Comments
  1. Sani says:
    January 16, 2013 at 1:08 pm

    I am surprised that Egyptian President Morsi is described as antisemite. Morsi too is a semite. Anti-semetism according to history tracks originated from the Christians who claimed that the Jews killed Jesus one of their brethen […] Your accusation means that you are acclaiming President Morsi as a non follower of Muhammad Rasulullah […]

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      January 16, 2013 at 3:56 pm

      Antisemitism needs to be called out, not excused. The same, I might remind you, goes for Islamophobia.
      The case for antisemitism as anti-Islamic could indeed be persuasively made, and needs to be made far more, by Muslims. Instead, too many argue precisely the opposite.

      • Muhammad Siddique says:
        February 14, 2013 at 5:36 am

        Lesley, I quote your words.
        “The case for antisemitism as anti-Islamic could indeed be persuasively made, and needs to be made far more, by Muslims. Instead, too many argue precisely the opposite.”
        I am a Muslim, but I cannot agree more with you on this. Islam does not advocate hatred for Jews as a people. The Prophet’s many interactions with the Jews of Madinah prove the opposite. For Muslims the father of Jews, Israel (Jacob) and their leader Moses are beloved figures. The quarrel that arose between sections of the latter days Jews and Muslims in Madinah is not a racial one, but a political issue. Today, if the democrats and republicans don’t see eye to eye, does it mean there is hatred between them?. Today’s Muslims’ view of Jews has become conditioned by the actions of the State of Israel.

        Muhammad Siddique

  2. Sarah says:
    January 16, 2013 at 3:35 pm

    Lesley, I have been in similar discussions from an early age. I always try to redirect the speaker: “You mean zionist, don’t you?” or, “you mean Israeli, don’t you?” There is no political correctness movement or enlightenment in the Middle East to help people un-learn their bigotry.

    A generation ago, Jews, Muslims and Christian Arabs lived together throughout the middle east. Many went to mixed schools and had friends of other religions. Now, this is restricted, even where the different groups co-exist. It is a tremendous loss. It is so much easier to paint people with a broad brush when you don’t actually know them.

  3. Hakan from Turkey says:
    January 16, 2013 at 7:05 pm

    You ask “which Jews” but I think it is not correct to turn a blind eye on the sentiments of the mainstream citizen of Israel. It is well documented that the Jewish people living in Israel see the Arabs inferior. I also remember reading in the news that the Israeli drafted soldiers (which means regular people, not professional killing machines) wearing t-shirts with visuals that implies they delightfully killed Arabs, or Israeli school children writing massages on bomb shells that they know will explode in a village in Palestine.

    Years of violence poisoned everybody in that unfortunate corner of the middle east. I hope they get back to their senses soon.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      January 17, 2013 at 11:10 am

      You might want to read my post again and examine your own thinking, Hakan. “The Jewish people living in Israel see the Arabs as inferior,” you say. Really? Not some, not even many, but all of them? Thanks for denying the existence of, among others, Israeli liberal activists and reporters, without whose work we would know little of what’s happening in the West Bank and Gaza. Instead, you repeat apocryphal tales from unsubtantiated sources — basically, urban legends based in prejudice. Years of violence have poisoned many people, true. But not “everybody.”

      • Hakan fron Turkey says:
        January 17, 2013 at 1:29 pm

        Of course no society on earth is monolithic. I actually used the term “mainstream”. I don’t blame all the Israelis. I thought I made that clear enough.

        Let me give you an example to make what I argue easier to understand. Do you think is it logical to claim that only the Nazis are to blame for the shoah? Or the German people, who elected them knowing what Hitler was up to, are also guilty? Of course there were good Germans too, some even committed suicide instead of being a part of that society. But we can absolutely say there was a serious problem with the “majority” of the German society at that time.

        Just like that, are we to blame Sharon, Netenyahu or Liberman alone, or the people who elect them and let them govern Israeli too?

        To repeat, I am not anti- anything and condemn Morsi’s statement.. I just say if people blame the “Israeli people” for what’s going on there, we need to stop and think if there is a truth in that statement, instead of fending them off by saying only the government is to blame.. We need to see the problem to correct it. Of course you know all of these better than me, I just wanted to remind.

        P.S. They are not urban legends, but documented realities:
        http://mondoweiss.net/2009/03/racist-and-sexist-military-shirts-show-the-fruits-of-israeli-militarism.html

        http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/israel-military-condemns-soldiers-shocking-tshirts-1651333.html

        http://wakeupfromyourslumber.blogspot.com/2006/07/israeli-children-sign-their-missiles_18.html

        just a couple links.

        • Lesley Hazleton says:
          January 17, 2013 at 1:53 pm

          I stand (and sit) corrected. Poisonous thinking spreads — and we all need to stand against it, wherever it is. In Israel, in Egypt, in the US, in Turkey, anywhere. Glad you’re on board.

  4. ThinkWorth says:
    January 17, 2013 at 10:08 pm

    Only an agnostic can be even-handed. I do appreciate your piece. I watched your recent video defending Prophet Mohamed before large audience under the title Muhammad, you and me. Keep up your good work. But surely, I am no agnostic.

Zero Bland Thirty

Posted December 23rd, 2012 by Lesley Hazleton

After a mind-numbing two and a half  hours of Zero Dark Thirty last night, I came away with a single piece of information:  Jessica Chastain has amazing hair.

chastainThat red mane stays toss-worthily silky even in the deserts of Afghanistan.  The dust clouds raised by helicopters landing right in front of her can’t dull her plastic glossiness.  Nor can the sight and sounds of torture alter the uncanny blandness of her expression.

The movie’s much-talked-about scenes of torture are peculiarly sanitized:  shown, but not shown.  There is no real sense of agony or degradation.  The chief torturer’s lines are a bunch of clichés straight out of the Hollywood B-movie playbook.  And the effect of torture on both victim and perpetrator?  So far as this movie is concerned, non-existent.

And this is what’s being touted as some kind of breakthrough for women?  It’s hardly news that there are women CIA analysts, or women movie directors.  And after seeing the infamous photos of Private Lynddie England at Abu Ghraib in 2004, do you really want to join the chorus of “Wow, look, a woman torturer!”

Zero Dark Thirty is a movie with zero point of view.  It has no engagement with any of the political and ethical issues it indicates but never explores.  Despite its subject matter, it is, in the end, a movie as bland as its star.  Its “reality-TV” lens on the slow accretion of intelligence work is merely confusing.  And I suspect director Kathryn Bigelow knew this, interspersing moments of ham-fisted emoting to keep her audience from nodding off.

All of which raises the question of why this movie was made at all.  A question whose answer apparently lies in the swell of orchestral music toward the end, signaling American triumphalism.

But my reaction was more of a shrug.

“We” killed bin-Laden, true.  And…?

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File under: ugliness, US politics, war, women | Tagged: Tags: Afghanistan, Bin Laden, CIA, Jessica Chastain, Kathryn Bigelow, torture, Zero Dark Thirty | 2 Comments
  1. tamam Kahn says:
    December 25, 2012 at 1:00 pm

    One more thing, Lesley. The identification for the raid reportedly came from faking polio vaccines, and by doing so, obtained info on ObL. That allowed for the raid. The horrible consequence is that polio workers are being gunned down and many more people will get this disease in the Pakistani/Afgan area! The director had an opportunity to include this but did not mention it, I understand. What a lost opportunity! What a sad thing! Tamam

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      December 25, 2012 at 4:17 pm

      There was one very brief scene — a few seconds — of a medical worker calling at the Islamabad house, and a voice-over from a CIA discussion saying, as best I can remember, “we tried using medical personnel, but that didn’t work.” (i.e., though the script didn’t make it clear, they didn’t manage to get DNA.) That last phrase — “that didn’t work” — certainly jarred like hell.

To Live And Die In America

Posted December 22nd, 2012 by Lesley Hazleton
This is the headline of The Huffington Post right now.  It’s a list of just some of the gun deaths in the last week alone, since the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School:

TO LIVE AND DIE IN AMERICA

3 Shot And Killed In Mich… 18-Year-Old Shot Multiple Times, Dies… Man Kills Wife, Teen, Himself… Man Shoots, Kills Own Son… Cops Shoot Teen Dead… Man Gunned Down In Parking Lot… 5 Dead In Spate Of Shootings… 2 Murdered In Philly… 2 Kansas Cops Shot Dead… Shooter Killed… 4 Die In Apparent Murder-Suicide… Ga. Cop Dies From Gunshot… Argument Leads Teen To Shoot Friend… Man Shot To Death… Teen Dies After Being Tied Up, Shot… Man Shot Dead In Street… Drug Deal Leads To Shooting Death… Mother Of 2 Killed In Road Rage Shooting… Man Shoots, Kills Intruder… 1 Killed In Coney Island… Man Dies From Gunshot Wounds… Cops Investigate Gun Death… Shooting Victim’s Body Found On Bike Trail… Man Charged With Shooting Own Brother Dead… Man Dies After Being Shot In Chest… Body Of Shooting Victim Found In Pickup… Teen Arrested For Robbery Shooting Death… Man Carrying 2-Year-Old Son Shot Dead… Man Fatally Shot Near Home… Parolee Dies In Shooting… 1 Killed In Buffalo Shooting… Man Shot Dead In Apartment Complex… Street Gun Battle Kills Grandma Bystander… Man, Woman Dead In Apparent Murder-Suicide… Woman Shot Dead By Intruder… 14-Year-Old Arrested Over Fatal Gun Attack… Man Found Shot Dead In Parking Lot… Woman Shot In Face By Ex-Boyfriend… 1 Woman, 3 Men Shot Dead… 2 Die In Attempted Robbery… Army Reservist Shot To Death In Alley… Man Shot To Death In Bodega… 2 Shot Dead In Burned House… Man Shot During Break-In… Man Fatally Shot… 20-Year-Old Gunned Down… Man Shoots Self During Police Pursuit… 1 Killed In Baltimore Shooting… Cops ID Shooting Victim… 60-Year-Old Man Shot Dead… Shot Man’s Body Found In Vacant House…. Woman Shot And Killed Outside Her Home… Shooting Victim Was ‘Trying To Turn Life Around’… Slain Shooting Victim Found In Street…. Driving Altercation Leads To Shooting, 1 Dies… 3-Year-Old Dies In Accidental Shooting… Man Turns Self In After Allegedly Shooting Wife… Man Shot Dead Outside Home… 3 Slain In Separate New Orleans Shootings… Cops Investigate Shooting Death… Man Shot Dead In Ohio… Teen Shot To Death… Man Dies After Being Shot Multiple Times… Man Charged Over Son’s Shooting Death… Cops Find 2 Men Shot Dead… 1 Dies In Shooting… Man Charged Over Gun Killing… 1 Shot Dead In Confrontation… Man Charged With Murder Over Shooting… Motel Owner Shot And Killed… Husband Shoots Estranged Wife Dead… Suspect Arrested Over Deputy’s Shooting Death… Police Probe Fatal Shooting… Cops Kill 2 Suspects In 3 Shooting Deaths… Man Killed Fighting Back Against Robber… Man Killed In Home Invasion…. Nightclub Shooting Kills 1… Child Brain Dead After Drive By Shooting… Man Charged Over Shooting Of Ex-Wife… Body Found In Vacant House… Teen Fatally Shot…

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File under: ugliness, US politics | Tagged: Tags: gun control, guns, homicides, Huffington Post, NRA, Sandy Hook | 6 Comments
  1. Hugh McCauley says:
    December 22, 2012 at 11:26 am

    Disgusting! The wild, wild West (Philadelphia) is 15 miles from my home. We hear it all on radio every day. Tragedy upon tragedy seems to multiply with gunshots everywhere in poor urban areas. As an old veteran I refuse to carry a gun because I’m afraid to, in case I was ever tempted to use one.

  2. SusieOfArabia says:
    December 22, 2012 at 12:31 pm

    It’s staggering! … and shameful.

  3. Donna says:
    December 22, 2012 at 1:50 pm

    I guess none of these killings would have happened if everybody had been armed.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      December 22, 2012 at 2:18 pm

      Yup, that’s NRA-sure. Today the NYT’s Nick Kristof tweeted this:
      “Following NRA logic that guns make us safe, Secret Service should arm everyone at presidential events, to foil assassins.”

  4. angela murnane says:
    January 2, 2013 at 1:00 am

    just keep spreading awareness … the smoking battle is almost won and it took decades … surely Americans can learn from mistakes

  5. Guy de la Rupelle says:
    May 12, 2013 at 12:02 am

    Feels odd reading through those horrifying statistics. I’ve been in Japan for over 2 decades and the situation is very different. In 2008, the U.S. had over 12 thousand firearm-related homicides. All of Japan experienced only 11, fewer than were killed at the Aurora shooting alone. And that was a big year: 2006 saw an astounding two (2!!!), and when that number jumped to 22 in 2007, it became a national scandal. By comparison, also in 2008, 587 Americans were killed just by guns that had discharged accidentally!
    To get a gun in Japan, first, you have to attend an all-day class and pass a written test, which are held only once per month. You also must take and pass a shooting range class. Then, head over to a hospital for a mental test and drug test (Japan is unusual in that potential gun owners must affirmatively prove their mental fitness), which you’ll file with the police. Finally, pass a rigorous background check for any criminal record or association with criminal or extremist groups, and you will be the proud new owner of your shotgun or air rifle. Just don’t forget to provide police with documentation on the specific location of the gun in your home, as well as the ammo, both of which must be locked and stored separately. And remember to have the police inspect the gun once per year and to re-take the class and exam every three years.
    Even the most basic framework of Japan’s approach to gun ownership is the opposite of America’s. U.S. gun law begins with the second amendment’s affirmation of the “right of the people to keep and bear arms”. Japanese law starts with the 1958 act stating that “No person shall possess a firearm or firearms or a sword or swords,” later adding a few exceptions. In other words, American law is designed to enshrine access to guns, while Japan starts with the premise of forbidding it. Interesting cultural differences I’d say.

Gun Sickness

Posted December 15th, 2012 by Lesley Hazleton

Guns make me sick.  Literally, sick.

At the sight of one, I get this queazy feeling in the pit of my stomach. I feel kind of faint. I want to throw up.  I want to be anywhere but where I am at that moment, to put as much distance as I can between myself and the weapon.

In this, I am no coward. I am simply sane. I am damned if I’ll show that I’m intimidated, but I’d be crazy not to be. Because whether a gun is holstered at the waist of a policeman, held pointed at me by a solider at a checkpoint, brandished by a proud collector, or flashed by a thug outside a nightclub, it says one thing and one thing only: “I can kill you.”

So with all the years of psychology behind me, with all my “experience” with guns (the sound of a bullet whistling past your ear is not one you ever forget), why do I still not understand why others don’t react this way? Why do I not understand that guns evidently turn many people on, and make them want to be the ones doing the killing?

What am I to make of a Facebook “friend” who declares herself a peace activist, quotes Rumi, and then obscenely argues that if only the teachers at that Connecticut elementary school had been armed… ? Or of another self-declared Facebook peacenik who maintains that she is “neither for nor against guns”?  That’s some kind of peace on earth. Forget good will to all men. Let alone women and children.

Over half the American population agrees with the National Rifle Association’s solipsistic dictum that “guns don’t kill, people do.” As though guns had any other purpose.  The same majority agrees with the argument that “incidents” like the Connecticut elementary-school shooting — only one of an average of twenty such mass shootings each year in the US — are not a gun-control problem, but a mental-health one. And in a way they don’t realize, they are right.

The United States does indeed have a severe mental-health problem, but it’s not a matter of a sick individual here and there.  It’s something far worse.  It’s a mass psychosis, in which this country places gun protection above the protection of human life.

Guns are the sacred cow of American politics.  Could there be a falser god?

Effective gun control is a political no-go.  And even if it were possible, it wouldn’t be enough. All guns are initially made and sold legally. And the guns used to kill twenty 6- and 7-year-olds and their teachers in Connecticut yesterday were bought by and legally registered to the shooter’s mother — who was his first victim.

Here’s what we really need to do:

We need to amend the Second Amendment.   We need to limit the “right to bear arms.”

And we need to brand the NRA a terrorist organization, one that aids and abets terrorism.  The terror on the faces of the surviving children being led out of their school yesterday testifies to that.

gun sickness

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File under: ugliness, US politics | Tagged: Tags: Connecticut, gun control, mass psychosis, mental health, NRA, Sandy Hook, Second Amendment, terrorism | 13 Comments
  1. Bushra Zafar says:
    December 15, 2012 at 8:44 pm

    I am so sick of all the stupid playing politics with people’s lives. this is not a rights issue. this is a common sense issue. If they want the right to bear arms then we should go back to the arms that were about when the constitution was written.

  2. saheemwani says:
    December 15, 2012 at 9:58 pm

    Thank you Lesley. I’m sharing this post on Facebook. One tight slap for the gun-defenders.

  3. Lynn Rosen says:
    December 16, 2012 at 9:13 pm

    Thanks for your reasoned post. Would that the rest of the world could see this through your clear eyes.

  4. Tea-mahm says:
    December 17, 2012 at 11:08 am

    Thank you for your wise words, Lesley! Also, I think we need to mention making it easier for families with mentally sick kids to get help. And prayer for the families. T’m

  5. zummard. says:
    December 17, 2012 at 3:30 pm

    Many of us feel more than sick to mention in words. I cannot imagine how the parents and relatives of those children will ever recover from such a tragedy.
    In my view, the real culprits are the (weapon)gun-manufacturing businesses. As someone said aptly, ‘so many guns are already in the hands of people in the U.S. that it is not possible to eliminate them anymore.’
    The manufacturers have sold so many to the rest of the world that we will never know how many innocent lives have been cut short by the guns that have travelled all over the world.
    WHEN WILL THEY EVER LEARN? WILL THEY EVER LEARN?
    When will their greed for making and selling weapons be satiated?
    And please don’t give me the line, Guns don’t kill. People do. Of course guns in the hands of people KILL. That is their only function.
    I don’t know if I am making any sense here – the world is an insane place right now.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      December 17, 2012 at 8:03 pm

      Thank you for prompting me: I just posted video of Marlene Dietrich singing Pete Seeger’s “Where Have All The Flowers Gone” with that famous refrain. — L.

      • zummard. says:
        December 18, 2012 at 4:19 am

        Thanks. I wish the whole world would sing it all together. I ask all those whose hearts have been touched by this violence to pray for a world where the sanctity of innocence is respected and sacredness of places such as schools, homes and places of worship is preserved.

  6. Joan Clark says:
    December 19, 2012 at 2:35 pm

    There is no need to amend the constitutional right to bear. Arms. Pass legislation to ban civilian sale of multishot magazine ammunition. If a mentally disturbed person only had access to single shot guns, knives, etc, fewer people would be killed.

  7. Jerry M says:
    January 15, 2013 at 11:11 am

    Except for the part about NRA being a terrorist organization (they aren’t they are a lobbyist for the gun manufacturers), I agree with everything else in the post.

  8. Fish Jones says:
    January 17, 2013 at 12:04 am

    There are so few hobbies that carry the feeling behind owning, caring for, and shooting a gun.

    So many people die every day–yet guns are what people whine about.

    Cancer and other diseases takes years to kill and is degrading, expensive, and exhausting. You become your disease. A gun accident has much less chance of that.

    If Sandy Hook had been a bus+train= exact same casualties, no one outside of Sandy Hook would care 2 months later.

    Yes, guns can sicken you. As someone with really bad phobias, I get that, but it’s just a gun.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      January 17, 2013 at 10:57 am

      What exactly IS “the feeling behind owning, caring for, and shooting a gun”? And what makes it a “hobby”?

    • Jerry M says:
      January 20, 2013 at 10:30 pm

      Why are we so willing to control alcohol consumption in order to prevent possible deaths but unwilling to control gun use? We have a gun violence problem that is an embarrassment (if only we were capable of embarrassment).

  9. Jerry M says:
    January 20, 2013 at 10:27 pm

    I will never know why all sorts of restrictions are allowed on freedom of speech (the first amendment) but to touch the second is considered in impossibility. The US has gun violence rates appropriate to a third world country. For some reason many Americans cannot be shocked into sanity when they are read the statistics.

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