Ultra-Orthodox Jews accused of racism over education demands – Middle East, World – The Independent
Sigh. I’m not sure why the Zionists get under my skin so much. I’m trying to think of emotional hot-buttons or triggers to why I get so passionate about it.
I fell in love with the idea of kibbutzes in college. That cherished, idealized, naive image of brotherhood being besmirched by the stain of racism and oppression -no lie- wounded the idealist I keep hidden deep in my heart. The ache I felt when I first discovered the dichotomy of kibbutzes and land grabs still echoes in my views concerning Zionism and Israeli policies today.
There’s also the fact that I’m an Olympic Games geek. The reality of the games is sometimes more stark than the fairy tale. I get that but I’m still a unabashed sap for the whole thing. Truly a romantic for the idea of people from all over the world, from all of these difference circumstances, coming together and competing in the hopefully even playing field of sports. The ancient history of the Olympics being a time when wars stopped in favor of the combat of sport doesn’t hurt either. I love all that shit. Needless to say, the idea of Olympic athletes from any country being attacked, let alone murdered, is absolutely horrifying to me.
I wasn’t born when Mark Spitz did his thing but, Olympic fan that I am, I was more than familiar with the highs and deep dark lows of the 1972 games. I was in Atlanta in ’96, watching recaps of events we hadn’t been at that day on TV, when the news came on about the pipe-bombing. Immediately all I could think about was the Israeli contingent getting murdered in Munich and something like that happening again. I practically flew up the stairs to my parents bedside. “Mommy, Mommy, someone is trying to blow up the Olympics.” Mind you, I was twenty-five years old. I can assure you that I hadn’t utter the word, “Mommy” in quite some time.
It’s not a direct line but I definitely have some association in my mind between the sordid injustice of extremists murdering innocent Israeli athletes and coaches (which is a really sacred kind of innocence to a geek for the romance of the Olympic fairy tale like myself) and my own sense of right and wrong. With extremists murdering innocents being the among the worst kinds of wrong.
The Israeli government seems so determined to be such fucking assholes to all of their neighbors and the citizens of their own country who are not members of the state religion that the injustice of it all makes my blood boil. Arghhhh!!!!!
The content of my own dictionary of formative experiences and and associations casts the Israeli people as the good guys, of the highest order. It hurts my heart to see a country that I have such romantic, idealized, and just warm and positive ideas about behave so very badly. After the sting wears off and I stop moping, the feelings just morph into being pissed off about being disappointed by something I thought so highly off.
Oh well. To continue my original thought this is the kind of stuff that makes the apartheid comparison so easy to make:
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