From the Desert Sun:
A competitor from Tel Aviv, Israel, Nathan Shaked, 37, is the new Mr. Gay International after two days of competition in Palm Springs.
Prizes include a modeling contract, a Caribbean cruise and a trip to Puerto Vallarta.Shaked assumed the title from last year’s winner, Jesse Basham of the United States.
This is the second consecutive year that the competition has been held in Palm Springs, according to a release from organizers.
Robert Tarroza of the Phillipines won the Mr. Congeniality title.
So take that, rioting Haredim. Y’all probably know by now that Jerusalem is contemplating revoking the license for the parade, which is supposed to take place next week. The reason given? It may ‘disrupt police operation’.
Follow Muffti here. The police get worried about being able to control crowds. Clever move by rioters? Go riot and provide all the evidence one needs to show that police disruption is a real factor. Result?
The protesters pelted police and motorists with stones, and set garbage bins on fire blocking traffic in the street…
Lovely. At least one nice result: Jews, Christians and Muslims are working together against their common enemy, the marching gays:
The burgeoning opposition to the local city parade has again united an unusual cross-party and inter-faith coalition of Conservative Orthodox Rabbis, Muslims, and Christians who call the event a deliberate affront and provocation to millions of believers around the world.
Muffti futhermore can’t help feeling that revoking a license because of rioting is not dissimilar to the one thing we have been told never to do: give in to terror. This sort of terror is no better than any other.
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Wait! You could have posted about her (comment 2) and instead you post about him?!
The umbrage and concern for human rights voiced by Muffti and other progressives would seem more sincere, less selective, if:
1) They had not totally ignored similar police restrictions on Jewish worshippers during the recent Sukkot holiday – propped up solely by lame police stories about “respecting the delicate sensitivies of Arab residents of the city”. A tack as laughably reminiscent of the old ghetto mentality as it is dangerously fearful.
2) They could admit that the residents of Jerusalem have as much right to express their views as the marchers themselves – and have been kept from doing so. It’s clear that marching specifically in Jerusalem – like the previous in-your-face gay march in Rome – is the significant point being made by the organizers.
The residents of Jerusalem have the same rights to expres their views, and to determine what is acceptable in their community. Their natural, democratic venues for this “communal self-expression” and judgement were stopped up by doctrinaire elites full of their own progressive omnipotence, as part of an ongoing cultural war.
Those who sow elitist intolerance reap the whirlwind – in this case a TRULY popular expression of widely held opinion on the streets of the city – an authentic public demonstration by the city’s own residents, rather than a carefully-groomed international media event.
Note to “progressives”: this is what real free speech looks like.
What is really means to “speak truth to power”.
If you can’t wrap your minds around that – around the unjust, heavy-handed, rights-suspending way in which this parade was imposed on Jerusalem – stop giving the rest of us hand-on-hip harangues about Human Rights…. the guys in black hats and frocks are way ahead of you in understanding these concepts…
Questions about murder, war, poverty, injustice, sexual oppresion etc. etc. are bush league to the almighty.
What God and his followers (of ALL herds) is truly concerned about is who´s hiding the salami, where they´re hiding it, with whom (who?) they´re hiding it and can/has your local witch doctor sanctioned it.
Now that´s a question to riot about or pass constitutional amendments about.
Assholes.
Gods priorities can not be denied.
As a resident of Jerusalem, due to the rioting of the haredim and the vile comments made by members of the Jerusalem municipality and fanatical religious leaders, as a straight, religious, married person I plan on marching and I urge the rest of the residents of my city to speak out against the vile bigotry and join me.
B-D, talk about heavy handed!
1) Muffti didn’t know that the police had done that on succot to worshippers. But he happily (in a sense) adds it to the list of things to condemn.
2) Muffti fully admits that religious members of the community have the full and complete right to voice there concern. Where do you see Muffti denying it? Jeez, dude, we are the site that showcases Nazi, skinhead and white power groups. Does that sounds like the kind of people who are out to squelch freedom of speech???
Muffti didn’t really say much about freedom of speech in the post, but if we’re on the topic, of course Jerusalem residents have every right to voice there opinion. Voicing your opinion, however, does not entail the right to victory for your side. It’s the job of the courts in civil society, not the mob, to take into account protection of free speech. If the orthodox have had trouble geting their point across, Muffti is pretty surprised. Is anyone in any doubt about how they feel about the march? Just when did this suppression of their right to express their opinion occur?
B-D, you are clearly a clever fellow but Muffti can’t help but feel you read into posts an awful lot in a somewhat radical interpretation of the text. Muffti’s point was that bowing to violence is no different in kind than bowing down to terrorism. We should think it is wrong in both cases. Kindly quote the ‘elitist’ bits so Muffti can get some clue about what you are talking about.
The point was summed us nicely, though unwittingly, by a spokesman from the Federation of Jewish Communities in Russia:
Allirght, finally, what Muffti wants is for you to explain to him what right of the orthodox is being violated by allowing a march. And by ‘right’ Muffti really means right. The right to not see things you don’t like is not a real right. The right never to offended is not a real right. What is a real right that is being denied to residents of Jerusalem?
GrandMufti: Israel has been capitulating to terror for years.
Ever try to daven on the Temple Mount? You can’t. Period. Every year, Jews try to daven there, and are refused permits by the police. They go to the Supreme Court, and the police always use the same excuse: “Arab Threat of Violence”…and guess what? The Supreme Court of Israel capitualtes to violence EVERY SINGLE TIME.
And that’s freedom of religion — not some march down the street.
So I guess the Chareidim have learned a lesson well from the Arabs. Violence Pays. Or in this case, the “threat of violence” pays.
PS: Please read my comment clearly — I’m not expressing an opinion, just stating a fact.
This disgusts me. Leaders should lead people away from mutual hatred and suspicion, not follow them into further pettiness.
Nakia: Israel has no leaders that lead for unity….just petty, small-minded politicians.
This summer, during the height of the war in Lebanon, when unity was at it’s high, Olmert made some stupid and crass comment about how the war would successfully further his Disengagment policies. This was being said as soliders were being killed — who would be kicked out of their homes by Olmert’s “policies.”
B-D, if this march was not “in-your-face,” it would miss the point. I’m also tired of hearing people lament about how the International Pride parade should be taking place in Tel-Aviv. In Tel-Aviv, gay people already feel (relatively) free to be open about who they are. Jerusalem is the place where 1000s of young (and old) people, both Haredim and secular, are still hiding their sexual orientation out of fear of being ostracized and of violence. This march is partially about showing closeted gay people that it’s perfectly normal to be who you are.
If Jerusalem is a city just for straight Haredim, then let Tel-Aviv be the city of gay seculars and kick all of those Haredim the hell outta there!
Grist for the mill? From Jpost:
Muffti realizes that sometimes things have to be cancelled because of threats of violence. But anyone who thinks that htis is an exercize of free speech is off their goddamned rocker.
Hello, Mr. Gay Netherlands! thanks for the picture, muffti, you made my day. finally some man meat on this site.
Why is no one mentioning Rabin today? Between this post and the (in my opinion) completely pointless Leonard Cohen lovefest, even something short and poignant would have done.
Is it just me or do gays and lesbians get publicity far in excess of their numbers. I live and let live,but please don’t stick your sexual preference in my face ! I am a happy heterosexual mensch.
Is it just me or do gays and lesbians get publicity far in excess of their numbers
I’ll fix it for you:
Is it just me or do Jews get publicity far in excess of their numbers
Is just me or do idiots get publicity and power far in excess of their numbers? (well maybe idiots are the majority)
Is just me or do cancer victims get publicity far in excess of their numbers?
Is just me or do american presidents get publicity far in excess of their numbers?
Is just me or does god get publicity far in excess of his numbers?
Is just me or do rioting conservative jews in Israel get publicity and power far in excess of their numbers and contribution?
By the way I live and let live, put please don´t stick your racial preference in my country! I am a happy white european heterosexual protestant nazi mensch.
Muffti –
Very nice of you to leave it all up to the courts – but as you and other involved Jewlicious folk know, the Supremes in Israel have been imposing a highly politicized and often anti-religious agenda.
Turning to the same court that suspended the rights to public assembly of those who opposed the Gaza expulsion – which is the sine qua none of protected political speech that the West protects, much moreso than the current, uh, spectacle – to turn to this court with a wide-eyed story about The Rule of Law is disingenuous.
And left-leaning, liberal folks tend to do this hypocritical “law-and-order” two-step with alarming frequency – which as I said, undercuts the sincerity of claims that this is just another cut-and-dried issue of civil rights.
So I am not so much reading things into this post as supplying the necessary back-story.
Communities around the world impose various restrictions on the free speech of individuals and groups. Germans and other Europeans don’t let neo-nazis or other groups parade or speak freely in their democracies. And most democracies have restrictions on indecent public displays.
The people of Jerusalem – through their elected city government – exercised this communal right to limit indecent or inflammatory speech.
Israel’s Supreme Court stepped in and – as it has before – contravened the free practise of democracy in service of a narrow elite agenda. It terminated – as it has before – the natural and civil rights of the majority that does not agree with its narrow agenda.
You may happen to agree with that narrow agenda. But please don’t lecture me or anyone else about civil/human rights if this is how you go about imposing your agenda.
Ben-David, how far does your distrust of the courts extend? To appeals of criminal matters? If the Israeli Supremes affirmed a murder conviction, would you reject the decision as illegitimate? Or is it just the rulings you disagree with that you refuse to respect?
Weren’t the Gaza pullout protesters engaged in civil disobedience? This is unlawful activity, is it not? Even Martin Luther King scrupulously obeyed every Federal court injunction entered against him, and every final court ruling. In a democratic society, you don’t get to do what you want. Nor do police or judges take polls to decide what laws to enforce.
Interesting that you cite European (esp. German) legislation aimed at neo-Nazis. Is this the best model for Israel– outright bans on speech? Of course, the American approach is different, with free speech permitted subject, i.a., to ‘time, place and manner’ restrictions– a balancing approach that respects rights to expression.
So– ban the Nazis and the gays! (And who else?) Call it the Ernst Roehm Law.
The people in the picture are bottoms. and they will all need surgery eventually to repair anal damage. So where’s your concern about them?
They have been chosen because they look immature – no bulging muscles – so where’s your concern about the obvious presentation of a pedophile ideal – underage – even thoug they themselves may not be underage, but that’s the look.
Where’s your concern about women? If you like women, why are you unconcerned about an advocacy presentation of a way of life where their sexual monopoly has been broken, rendering them, their moods, their children and supposed cooties, unnecessary. A world without women. Maybe after they win, they will keep just a few in a room for reproductive purposes. Why can’t you find a feminist when you need one?
Everybody thinks gay culture and straight culture can coexist. I, too, wish there were no agonizing choices to make in life, but there may be, anyway. We are not in Eden and in some ways life can stink and be horribly unfair.
The religious teachings do NOT say: “do NOT bang your head on the wall. Do NOT walk on your hands.” Why should they? Nobody does those things anyway. They don’t feel good. The religious teachings prohibit stuff people might very well want to do, lots of people, under the right social conditions. Most people, in fact.
Peolple have afflictions, so struggle. People have their views and tastes, so keep to yourself out of consideration. Is that fair? Not particularly. But maybe it’s reality.
Should fifteen black-hats, in full streimel regalia, sit down in a fern bar and ruin the atmosphere for the people whose place it is? No, they shouldn’t. Well??? Then why is this ok?
To each his own? That’s not what’s going on here.
Sexuality is a powerful feeling so why don’t people have the right to defend themselves from seduction? Unwanted seduction is manipulation and even cultural imperialism.
The right being defended is the right not to be subjected to seduction, manipulation and cultural imperialism.
Sorry, not every way of life is equally good. I only wish there were no pain in the world. But kidding yourself does not work.
Well, well, well; now there’s a rather novel perspective. Yup, I certainly can’t say I’d ever considered the issue from that particular angle.
Wow. Tasteless and paranoid. I’ll make sure to guard my ass so I don’t catch the gay from those sinister pedophiles. Because they’re trying to spread their gayness to get rid of the women! Look out behind you! You might catch the gay and kill your loving wife because you hate her ovaries!
Not tasteless. Just paranoid.
And not hostile, not absolutely.
People are stuck with certain things, and life can be very hard. I never said nobody should be gay! Or that people should be mean to gays!
I just said this is aggressive, not live-and-live, and, I said not everything goes everywhere. Tom Morrissey said that too! He said that is the American way – not everything, everywhere, any time.
You didn’t address a lot of what I said. What’s so funny about pedophilia and surgery?
B-D, the reading into posts consists in your omnipresent tendency to saddle posters with every aspect of the agenda of the politics you place that poster in. In Muffti’s case, it seems that every aspect of leftist culture is now his baggage. Frankly, you can keep that baggage to yourself. Muffti doesn’t think that appeal to courts is disingenous at all. In fact, he knows of no other way to enforce and interpret the law but the courts and legislature.
What is your clever suggestion for creating a body whose job it is to adjudicate what is consistent with the law as laid down by the representatives of the people and what isn’t? Please tell Muffti or don’t lecture the Grand one about ‘wide eyed appeals’. In particular, where is the hypocrtical ‘two step’ you speak of?
Anyhow, Muffti can’t think that you are being rather disingenuous yourself, amigo. Lumping together constraints of freedom of speech put on nazis and other acknowledged hate speech with bans on marches by people whose life style you don’t like are apples and oranges. While no one believes in the unmitigated version of this, there is a principle of harm floating around in the background that says that one may constrain various freedoms when the harm that would result from them is greater than any benefit that can be derived from them. That means that you have an obligation, when you want to restrict the use of your city for a group, to show that there is plausibly a great deal of harm that can result. The Germans don’t ban neo-nazi groups becuase they don’t like their lifestyle – they ban them because of hte obvious threat of harm that results from allowing them full ability to excersize their rights. Any community that respects general freedom of speech respects the rights of people whose lifestyles they find utterly wrong to express their point of view.
One may, of course, pick the second option – decency. But that is a tough case to make, as the history of supreme courts in various countries have suggested.
Muffti isn’t imposing any agenda in any case. Muffti isn’t gay, Muffti doesn’t benefit from gay rights, Muffti’s life wouldnt’ be much different if the world decided to ban gay parades and marches everywhere. Muffti is giving an opinion on the behaviour of a small group of a small group: a few hundred Haredis and the police that seem despite recent denials, to be infringing on the rights of a parade in a sheer bowing to violence. Would you be happy if a group of orthodox jews who wanted to march had their permit revoked because Muffti and a few hundred friends stabbed an orthodox man at the march the year before and then kicked up a fuss throwing rocks and the like and the police capituated to this small groups demands?
Or are YOU happy with this way of establishing YOUR agenda? If so, kindly don’t lecture the Muffti on human rights or anything germane to it.
Or maybe it would be best, in the name of civil discourse to stop saddling one another with the views of those they are merely somewhat sympathetic to and talked like menches. And maybe you can answer Muffti’s questions: when was the right of free speech abridged w/r/t this case? THe rabbis have had ample opportunity to speak for their communities. THey have had ample chance to meet with muslim and christian leaders. THey have had the opportunity to meet with the chief of police to voice their concerns. Where exactly is the right to freedom of speech here being denied? Or are you simply confusing the right to be heard with the right to have everything go your way?
Wow. I have to admit I’ve never heard gays referred to as “bottoms”. Is that a new homophobic catchword or did you make that up?
Explain to me this surgery thing…
Jewish Mother, with all due respect, what the hell are you talking about? Muffti doesn’t care about the anal cavities of people in general, but he certainly thinks that is no reason to restrict what people should do with them.
Muffti isn’t presenting an advocacy of anything here. Sexuality is a personal matter and women simply don’t have the right to insist that their sexual monopoly trumps the personal right to choose your partners. Any more than Muffti has the right to insist that nuns put out because he’s horny adn wants the ability to be the head of a household. In any case, if you think that all women have to offer men is their uterus, Muffti can’t help but think that he isn’t the one with a screwed up view…
Those guys don’t look underage to Muffti. Strength and youth is a general ideal presented to men in muscle and lifestyle magazines in general. That doesn’t mean that it involves pedophelia.
As for the rest of your comment, muffti is more lost han when he tries to read Kant…
Ramon, I think she means bottom as in “the penetrated,” which is the generally accepted term. You know, a top, a bottom, or, to quote Ren and Stimpy, “I’m the pitcher, you’re the catcher.” How she figured from the picture the top/bottom status of those three gentlemen is a mystery. Almost as much of as mystery was why a purported nice Jewish Mother would be reading up about the anal health of those who receive anal sex.
And as for you, oh Jewish Mother, remember that just because you said it doesn’t mean it deserves to be addressed.
Post 24: I am not making anything up and it is fine you do not know what I meant.
GM – No, they are not underage. I didn’t say they were. I said they were PICKED out of the many candidates to present, and evoke, an underage STYLE of looks, while being on the legal side of the line. No defined muscles on view here, just hairless smoothness. Again, it is fine you do not know what I meant.
You say:
“Sexuality is a personal matter and women simply don’t have the right to insist that their sexual monopoly trumps the personal right to choose your partners.” Ah ha! Well, that is a very articulate statement of the problem. Yes, it’s a problem.
OK, that’s twice I had to say “it is fine you do not know what I mean.”
All RIGHT. Since you lot do NOT KNOW MUCH ABOUT THIS where do you get off opining so firmly???
Eh???
I mean, thank G-d for your ignorance but please eat your soup and, er, shut up.
Michael, that’s what confused me. How can you tell from the photo? Let’s ask Jewish Mother… Jewish Mother, are you sure these guys are “bottomers”? Or could they also be “toppers”? Or “reach-arounders”? “Pooftahs”? “Fagelahs”? “Log Cabin Republicans”?
Or could some of the be… maybe…
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278102/
Except the amount of manscaping it would take to get in the photo above… Oy Vay!
And no, JM, it is not fine that I don’t know what you meant. Explain it to me. I want to know. And in terms I won’t need a lit professor to decode for me.
Or maybe enough already.
I know what I know just from existing, not making a weird study of people’s personal lives. This stuff is widely known.
Let the best man/woman win, is that what you are saying? Yes, it is.
You are saying, let them march, and, if they convince some people, or encourage some people, well, let people make up their minds.
Your position is that this is a harmless matter. A matter of choice, like liking shwarma or not liking shwarma. Who cares if half the neighborhood eats shwarma, I don’t have to.
Are you sure that is an accurate description of reality as it is really lived? I mean, how harmless is this? You have been told you should not be afraid, and you are dutifully trying to pretend you are not. But your soup hand is shaking, my sharp eye caught it.
I am not teasing you. I never tease.
You are right to be afraid, and I am too.
No whistling past the graveyard, please.
Not to agree with JM, but in that photo, the guy on the right looks like a teenage boy.
What I find interesting is that attractiveness in this competition seems to imply thin, hairless and young. While JM’s comment about them being “bottoms” may be tasteless, I think what she’s getting at is that they look submissive as opposed to strong and domineering. In other words, in order to win a gay men’s beauty contest, you have to appear more effeminate than masculine.
This, of course, has nothing to do with the morality of homosexuality. In fact, as I understand it, the problem the Orthodox have with homosexuality is that one form of sex is prohibited in the Torah. On a different level, homosexuality undermines the idea of a family unit that procreates as per the commandment to be fruitful and multiply. Still, the hostility towards the homosexual community is really surprising in its strength.
Ultimately, however, like any group, they should have the right to express themselves freely, just as the Haredim and their other opponents have the right to PEACEFULLY protest the parade. This is about live and let live and it is about preserving democracy and the right of minorities to speak their minds.
I still maintain that there is nothing funny about pedophilia or surgery and I wish everybody all good things, and thanks for talking.
Signing off for now, ciao amici e amiche.
Tasteless! It’s not tasteless. It’s the facts. THEY use this word, just descriptively, not negatively. That is what this is a picture of. The fact that you don’t know that does not change anything.
They could just as well have another contest, for tops. I am not making this up! You don’t like? You find it tasteless? Me too! So go protest the parade! But face what you are looking at. Don’t pick on ME. I just told you the emperor had no clothes. I didn’t make him what he is.
This discussion would make a lot more sense if it were restricted to people with something to lose. Such as parents of twelve- to 26 year- old children, and young women trying to get a husband in New York or Houston or San Francisco. Easy to be tolerant when you have nothing to lose. For now.
The Torah also doesn’t like men and women wearing each other’s kinds of clothes, or anything that blurs distinctions. The Torah likes distinctions, between all kinds of things.
So, the Torah would not like a middle aged man who had done all his “procreating” already (you know, breeding, like a goat or an amoeba) buying one of these young men dinner.
This stuff undermines everything the religious, and even the straight, community stands for up, down and sideways. That is the reason for the strength of the hostility you mention.
It is the BRUTAL IMPERIALISM that is arousing such fury. Their insistence that the other way of life bow, kneel, and have no place to be enthroned. If there is even one such place, Jerusalem, then there is still an argument, which they might lose. There must be complete victory. No, Jerusalem must concede, as Rome seems to have conceded. If it were live-and-let live, they would be happy to have Tel Aviv and “let the crazies have Jerusalem, who cares.” No, it’s much more than live-and-let live.
You chaps are tone-deaf and tin-eared. It is a frequency you can’t hear.
Now I really will be quiet. Shabbat Shalom.
JM, give Muffti some soup and he’ll glad shut up and eat it. But until then, read more carefully. Muffti said that these dudes don’t look underage to him. He never said that YOU said that they were underage. He was giving an opinion. The fact that the winners look youn,does not imply, to his mind, that they look underage. Nor does it seem that holding up youthfulness per se has anything to do with encouraging pedophelia.
It’s fine, you don’t know what Muffti meant. Of coruse, Muffti could be wrong about this, but those guys don’t look as though they are below any legal limits.
As for sexual monopoly, Muffti knows exactly what you meant, he was saying that it was entirely irrelevant. No one deserves a sexual monopoly – it’s something you get or don’t get. It’s not a right, it’s not even something you can whine about if you lose it. People have the right to pursue sexual lifestyles as they please, even if it is to the deteriment of htose they don’t pick. In any case, there is no great reason to assume that these sort of contests have any effect on teh overall number of gay people. Women and their supposed sexual monopoly can rest safe so far as he call tell. Muffti certainly does his job to keep the women happy in that regard.
Obviously, you don’t understand what Muffti means at all. BUt he’s too polite to tell you to shut up. After all, you’re a Jewish Mother.
Is there a dcotor is the house? Stat!
Jewish Mother, if it helps, there are plenty of nice Jewish girls out here who date other nice Jewish girls, so we’re doing out part to make sure the straight girls can find husbands. Don’t be afraid, really. We’re team players.
To all the progressive, intelligent people in Jerusalem: I’ll be marching with you in spirit! You’re doing such a mitzvah, and amechad, you especially.
I will agree that I’m tone deaf. Ever hear me daven?
To get back to Muffti’s post, for some reason this reminds me of when the Klan went before the Supreme Court to be able to march through Skokie, IL – a city that at the time had a large number of Holocaust survivors. While there are differences between that case and gays marching in Israel, one interesting note was that one of the JDL’s rationales for legitimizing a restriction on the Klan’s “right” to free speech (march) was that “Hate speech is very similar to pornography”. (Dec 30, ’00)
Of course I don’t completely agree with that. A photo of two people having sex is much less destructive to society than hate speech. Although I’m sure many others would call me a pervert for saying that. Just wanted to widen the discussion is all.
I agree, Ramon… hate speech is an act with no other purpose than to incite hatred and possibly violence against others. Two people having consensual sex… generally speaking, not much hatred going on there, and certainly no intent to hurt other people. And this march isn’t even about the sex! It’s about the gay population of Jerusalem being visible and legitimately having the same right to peacefully be publicly acknowledged that the haredi do.
You know Jewish Mother’s in trouble when she has to invoke me as authority.
Tom, I hope her invocation of your authority had nothing to do with anal cavities.
MOrrissey! email the muffti: [email protected]
Middle, I defer to JM’s evidently superior expertise in matters homophile.
Muffti, you make it all sound to good, noble, and reasonable – you should leave academia and become a copywriter…
1) You write:
Muffti doesn’t think that appeal to courts is disingenous at all. In fact, he knows of no other way to enforce and interpret the law but the courts and legislature.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Except that this court has a track record of going beyond interpretation of law to actual meddling, abusing Israel’s loosely defined democracy in a consistent pattern of rulings whose ideological bias that is most relevant to the current issue.
You know of this background, yet consistently elide it from your discussion.
That is disingenuous.
Unconstrained by this history, you imply that it is the haredim who are the barbarians at democracy’s gate, when they are really the ones “speaking truth to power” – by daring to object to the secular elite’s rule by fiat.
These strategies are straight out of the leftie playbook – present yourself as the victim while attacking others, turn to the courts to impose your agenda undemocratically, suspend the rights of those opposed to you – and roll your eyes and talk about the danger to our freedoms while doing so.
So no, muffti, I am not burdening you with any ideological baggage you do not already own. It’s yours, baby.
You and Middle have a lovely way of presenting yourselves as reasonable men surrounded by crazies – but in order to do this, it is necessary to omit increasingly large chunks of reality.
2) You write:
Lumping together constraints of freedom of speech put on nazis and other acknowledged hate speech with bans on marches by people whose life style you don’t like are apples and oranges.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Well, no. Or at least – the difference cuts into your argument, not mine.
Other posters have already mentioned the Skokie case – it’s interesting that you describe the Nazi party using the leftie-victimology term of “hate speech” – a term used by the left to silence dissenting opinion on a host of issues.
In fact the Nazis are a political party – and therefore the Skokie march stood at the focal point of Western free-speech-and-assembly statutes. Which is why the US Supreme Court allowed that march.
It’s political speech that is meant to be protected – the Gay Pride shindigs only sneak in because the statutes are made as broad as possible to prevent the curtailing of political speech.
Another example of this sort of absolutely protected political speech is, of course, the protests surrounding the Gaza expulsion. Yet Israel’s supreme court repeatedly refused to hear appeals by MKs and others when the Sharon government revoked their parade licenses, and shut down debate – in fact the court abetted this process of political silencing by approving the incarceration of non-violent political activists, including teenagers.
Which brings us to your question – you ask what freedoms were abridged in this case. Being a Jew, I’ll answer your question with a question:
Why was it necessary for the court to intervene in this case – overriding democratically elected officials – while the same court yawned at the restriction of real political expression, by Israeli citizens – not just yawned, but abetted the suspension of free speech and assembly along political lines?
Why is one intervention justified, but not the other? Again – it is the expulsion protests, and not the Gay Pride parade, that more closely match the type of political speech that the West takes pains to protect.
Why should this court be trusted, given its track record?
… and if someone knows all this, but acts as if this back-story doesn’t exist – so that they can frame the issue using the classic leftie construncts of victimology politics – are they really as middle-of-the-road and reasonable as they make themselves out to be?
You own every bit of leftie baggage I ascribe to you.
BD, didn’t have time to sift through all your points (sundown’s coming and I gotta go to work)… but as far as my bringing up Skokie and the term “hate speech”, if you read my comment (36) you’ll see I was quoting the JDL’s position which justified restraining the Nazi Party’s right to march by equating hate speech to pornography (an equivocation I don’t agree with). I wouldn’t call the JDL lefties…
Nor would I call myself a crazy surrounding Muffti and middle. A pain in the ass, maybe…
ramon –
I referred to muffti’s post, and his use of the term “hate speech” – as if the Nazi party’s right to free speech and assembly were somehow not central to the Western concept of protected free speech.
My point is that the US Supremes made the correct – though painful – decision to protect political speech. In contrast, the Israeli Supremes have selectively applied these freedoms to suit a narrow agenda – in the past, and in the present case.
This voids most of the assertions being made by the left-liberal, pro-gay-pride side of the issue:
– The gays are not beleagured victims speaking truth to power – they are in fact backed by the powerful, and the court’s intervention to allow the march is an imposition by the powerful upon a forcefully silenced majority. It is the haredis and others who are speaking truth to the entrenched power of the secular elite.
– The Israeli supreme court has not bravely upheld freedom of speech, or the rule of law – it has shown itself incapable of doing so consistently and ethically: instead, this is another slanted, meddling ruling in service of a larger cultural war….
….and in that cultural war, the people who claim to be upholding western freedom and civil democracy are in fact doing the exact opposite – they are turning to the courts to circumvent democracy, and void their neighbors’ freedoms. Like left-wingers in other places around the world.
Wow, I’ve noticed on this site that nothing gets the keyboards going like homosexuality. This march, I don’t know where it goes, but it should avoid holy sites. That aside, what is the problem with it?
It’s ironic that what B-D describes as a “leftie” viewpoint– let the march go forward in the interests of freedom of expression– is actually a conservative one, in the classic, Burkean sense of the term.
Sheesh, B-D, now you’re just being plain out rude! Muffti’s good at academia! And, with all due respect, given the one trick you keep calling on – the left employees ‘victimology’ non-stop – but the cleverness with whcih you employ it, the dialectical hostility you whip up with it, one might think that the real soul of propoganda and clever copyrighting lie within you. Besides, Muffti can barely spell.
Barbs aside, you have given muffti a good deal of food for thought. Let’ see.
You write:
Muffti implies nothing about haredim – Muffti HAPPILY implies something about RIOTERS. This may seem like a fine point of distinction, sicne the rioters are haredim, but Muffti suspects you are clever enough to see the difference. Muffti in no way endorses shutting down Haredi right to free speech. Muffti thinks it’s downright reprehensible and any ‘leftie playbook’ that endorses this tactic should be, well, not burned, but kept as a relic and a warning for future good citizens of the world.
Muffti doens’t approve of courts that bring forth an agenda, and Muffti realizes that Israeli supreme court has had a recent history of doing so. Big surprise. Courts in the US have had an obvious history of swaying back and forth with the political winds. As in Canada, as in Muffti suspects, eery country with such a system. If you are trying to complain that no system is perfect, Muffti hears ya Brother! Tell him waht you would prefer.
What Muffti is objecting to is the ‘solution’ of rioting in the streets. And what you persistently ignore, in order to make YOURSELF seem reasonable amongst insane folks like the Muffti and the Middle, is Muffti’s basic point: its as wrong to cave to rioters and vandals as it is to cave to terror in general.
Since when is THAT a standard manouver out of the leftie playbook?
Muffti has noticed a certain little trick of yours that comes out of the B-D playbook. The trick is an odd one – first you build up your opponents to be nearly invincible and then you claim that they are basically pretedndinb to be victims:
How is this not victimology politics? Please explain because Muffti is really not understanding the term very well anymore if it doesn’t apply to the very method you are trying to use in protectin your favourite group? People have been wronged across the board; people have been denied their rights across the board; peopel are treated unequally across the board. There is nothing wrong with pointing that out and, in some cases, lashing out politically at those hwo have wronged you. Why is it dfferent for the left or the right, the gays or the haredim?!?
One last issue that Muffti wishes you would address, rather than picking over things and avoiding the meat and attacking the trimmings. Do you agree that the right to free speech does NOT entail the right to have your way? And do you agree that, at least in this case, the Rabbis in general (not just haredim) have had no problem getting their point of view across?
Onward. Muffti agrees that the court did exactly the right thing in skokie. You may have noticed that as far as allowing speech for the Nazis, this site is pretty damned libertarian in its approach. What Muffti disagrees with is that the gay parade isn’t political in nature. You can go on all you like, and we can argue as we have, about whether or not homosesxuality is a legitimate way of life or a degenarate sickness – Muffti is well aware of your opinions on this matter. Howeve,r on the assumption that they represent a legitimate lifestyle (is this a leftie playbook move?), they seem entirely within their rights to march as a political entity. CAlling it a shindig rather than a political message to the world is,w ell, straight out of EVERYONE’S playbook and it’s a cheap shot, just as calling soething hate speech is in your mind a way of silencing dissent. Muffti never advocated silencing hate speech so much as confronting it and displying it for its general idiocy, as we try to with our hate site of the weak awards. It doesn’t follow, of course, that it isn’t hate speech. So, once again, please don’t saddle Muffti with baggage or opinions that aren’t his. We’re in sheer agreement on the Skokie case and similar cases. That doens’t mean it isn’t hate speech.
The reasons one might deny the Nazis the right to march is pretty obvious: they represent a group that has, as its foundation both anti-democratic agendas AND a history of inciting violence against targetted group. Muffti supports letting them march despite this. But they gay parade seems to come with no such baggage. Their agenda is not anti-democractic and the foundation of their group as a political entity incites no violence ot anyone. Call it victimology politics, but they are typically on teh recieving end of violence not the other way around.
As fro answering Mufftis quesion with a quesiton, Mufftis question was directed twoards the suppression of freedom of speech in THIS instance, namely the gay parade. Of course the Haredim have had their speech suppressed – and Muffti agrees that this is a bad thing. Muffti essentially thinks of the expulsion as he thinks of Roe vs. Wade: results that are good but borne of a process so rough and mutilating of rights that he’s sorry the result came about that way and isn’t totally sure it was at all worth the cost. But PRIOR suppression of haredi right to free speech and demonstrate is not at issue, and the fact that they were wronged in this manner doens’t mean that the gays should be wronged in a similar manner now. So why is it relevant to the case at hand?
And notice, most of all, returning to Skokie, that their right to speech was protected against a non-silent majority, unlike the so-called ‘silent majority’ you claim for your side (the Haredim certainly aren’t a majority…)
*sigh* and all this in the wake of a post about why its wrong to cave to violence.
Muffti, you’re a great guy. Thanks for fighting the good fight.
The way a little reasonableness gets people riled up around here, sheesh!
Take away your personal views on homosexuality (which will be difficult for many) and see how the issue with this parade boils down to one of sensitivity. Let’s allow the parade may be insensitive because of where it is held as well as who is holding it. But GM made it clear in his post that his real issue with the Haredi was not whether they’re anger is justified or if they have a right to protest. It was about their promise of violence.
No one’s trying to to apply U.S. law to the Israel. I was only trying to show comparisons between this and Skokie in the context of the conflict between free speech and sensitivity. Complicated, isn’t it? So much so it went the U.S. Supreme Court. (Muffti – I’ll disagree with you that the U.S.S.C. Supreme Court swayed with the political wind with Skokie – look at which Justices fell on which side of the decision. Clearly not based on biases.)
Why did Skokie become a flashpoint for the ADL (and JDL)? Partly because it was a Jewish neighborhood and moreso because it had a high concentration of Holocaust survivors. Purposefully ultra-insensitive for the Nazis to choose Skokie. If the march was held in Greensboro I doubt Irv Rubin would’ve pulled out his shotgun. But the Nazis picked Skokie with the hopes that the Jewish community would lose it’s cool and resort to violence.
In that context, here’s one that’ll piss people off: Of course the Al Aqsa intifadah was gonna happen sooner or later. Sharon goes (with great fanfare) to Temple Mount to light the powderkeg. Hard to argue it wasn’t purposeful. Did Sharon have the right to go? Of course. Did he have the right to go knowing the consequences? He sure did. Was the Palestinian shock understandable? Yes.
Was the Palestinian response valid? No. I would’ve loved to go with Irv Rubin to Skokie to stop the Nazi march “by any means”. Would that have been valid? At least Irv, until he died, admitted he didn’t care between understandable and valid. Or whether his actions hurt or helped Jewry in the long run.
If that comparison doesn’t piss some of you off, try this one:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-02-24-funeral-protests_x.htm
When these psychos showed up at a military funeral in my home state it prompted legislation banning these tasteless, disgusting protests. The only dissenting vote was from a liberal lawmaker who lost a son in Iraq. When asked if she would’ve changed her vote if these assholes showed up at her son’s funeral she said “This is very emotional because the speech we’re addressing is very ugly, but we can’t repeal the Bill of Rights because of it.” Kind of like what GM said: “Muffti never advocated silencing hate speech so much as confronting it and displaying it for its general idiocy.”
And now Israel’s attorney general has ok’d the march and the Haredi leadership says it won’t try to curb violence.
P.S. – to answer whether or not it would be good for 90% of men to be gay? Well, being in the other 10% I’d say my chances of getting a date went from zero to one.
Through all our trials, we continue to raise our voices together, so that our message echoes across the ancient hills: tolerance has a home in Jerusalem.
This really does not sound at all aggressive to me, nor do the press releases from JOH. And we’ve just reviewed a Hate Site of the Week, so any resemblances would be nice and fresh.
(Breaking into the stores in Geulah and putting lame on the wares would be aggressive. So would squirting stronger bleach or acid or just great volumes of water on people’s clothes to make them more transparent. I digress.)
Marisa pointed out the happy side of why any “but we should shame or badger the men in that march into going straight and procreating” line of reasoning should be questioned.
The unhappy side has a new poster boy, Ted Haggard. Having that (maybe as much as) 10% of men who are attracted to their own kind feel trapped into a double life is a great recipe for mommies getting AIDS from their lying husbands.
(I think I saw a study that ‘out’ gays are much more likely to practice safe sex, but it could’ve just been about women, not sure.)
so that’s a big NO THANKS to any offers of in-denial, meltdown-prone, in-the-closet marriage partners who don’t want me!
Uh… echo… no and no again. You know full well, I’m not comparing gays and fascists rather than the issues in the Jerusalem parade and white supremacists in Skokie only in the context of protecting free speech. How much more can you maniuplate my comments? (Quite a bit I’m gathering.)
There are comparisons between any issues of protecting right of free speech and peacefull assembly – if not legal than ethical. And in the context of protecting rights of free speech, and as has been pointed out over and over here, those of us who support those rights do so no matter how distasteful. Am I making myself clear enough?
Or am I sounding to you like some ACLU coward?
I’ll let most of the rest of your… slide (although I will apologize for the unfunny joke). Except to ask who are you to define the scope of my comments, and worse, to imply that I’m not a Jew interested in Israel’s survival?
And Lirotov – you are fast becoming my favorite commenter. From a fellow outlander…
Jeez, Muffti goes away for less than 24 hours and looks what happens?
OK, many good points (and not so good ones) ahve been raised and here’s at best an incomplete treatment of some of both.
Alan, thanks so much! You sound like a great fella yerself 🙂
Echo, pardon the Muffti for not addressing your question sooner, but you should know, Muffti has a life outside of this stuff and CK doesn’t pay him for doing any of this stuff. So, chill, the Muffti is happy to answer. When he has a chance.
Muffti thinks Israeli society would be screwed if 90% were homosxuals, unless arrangements were made on mass coordination to produce children. Minus that, we’d all be in big trouble.
However, your question is sneaky coz it is predicated on a presupposition:
Muffti never said that gay was good. Muffti doesn’t think any particular sexuality is good, at least not in the sense of better than any other. What he said was that he thinks being gay is a legitimate lifestyle choice. The fact that if nearly everyone, Israeli or other, chose that as their lifestyle, we’d all be screwed, does not entail or even make plausible the proposition that it isn’t a valid lifestyle choice.
Think of it this way, Muffti imagines you agree that selling your stocks tommorow is a perfectly valid choice you can make. If everyone did it, there would economic collapse. Muffti imagines that you think one may choose without condemnation of their lifestyle to vote against your favoured political party. Muffti imagines that the voluntarily celibate were to increase to 90% in numers, similar things would happen. Muffti doesn’t thereby conclude that celibacy is not a valid lifestyle. No doubt you wouldn’t think that life was hunky dorey if 90% of the relevant population actually did it. The point? One can say that X is a valid lifestyle choice even if everyone’s doing X would lead to disaster.
In any case, Muffti imagines you can see the point: attack one group whose over-popularity would cause result X, then attack every group whose over-popularity would result in X. That’s how fairness works, bro.
You agree that gays have the right to march. Muffti agrees that gays have the right to march. So he’s no entirely sure just what the issue is. Is marching in jerusalem unwise? Is it unfair to the Haredim? These are difficult questions: clearly not everything that people have a right to do (i.e. lie to each other, laugh at eachohter’s misery) are good or wise things to do. Muffti agrees that people should try to respet eachother’s sensibilities. What about when the people’s who sensibilities you are offending are telling you that a core part of your identity is illegitimate and an abomination towards the lord and nature? You may at that point be justified in being a little bit upset! Were the haredim provoked? Maybe a little. Tough shit: in civil society sometimes you get provoked. Deal with it. Don’t be surprised if you don’t get a lot of sympathy coming from the people you claim are living a lifestyle that is illegitimate that apparently comes from your biological composition.
Muffti isn’t really sure whether or not Skokie is relevant. He’s pretty sure that the analogy bears some fruits but suffers some clear disanalogy. Ramon, you may well be right but mufftis’ comments about courts swaying wasnt’ suppose to apply directly to skokie so much as a tendency oft noticed that when judges are appointed by government, they tend to swing as a group from left to right over time.
And ramon, you’re funny and the joke wasn’t THAT lame 🙂
I referred to Tom Morrissey’s apt description of how the Americans work with this kind of difficult problem, in general. They are not extremist. They go down the middle, conceding some things, and not everything. They are wonderfully mature! They also have a very big country, so there is room for people who think very differently to stay out of each other’s way. Manhattan isn’t Boise.
But the point here is to make their statement in the historic seat of Judeo-Christian thought, whose core engine is hetero monagamy. They saved it for last, having made their point in Rome.
Their point is: “this is ok.” Well, maybe it’s not totally ok, under ALL CONDITIONS and in ALL PLACES AND AT ALL TIMES. GM, you are talking in the abstract. This is about life as it is lived, not abstractions. Life is not mathematics.
It’s not a one-day parade! One could take a nap, and ignore that. No, it is a week-long film festival, etc etc etc etc, which will truly change the atmosphere in all of Jerusalem. It will leave no one in the whole city in the position of being able to not notice, or not pay attention. No, they are going to reach everyone in the whole city, like it or not. A lot of people, many young, are going to learn things they might be better off not learning.
Can you imagine that some people in the press – Yossi Beilin – say this is not sexual? What a laugh. That would crack me up, if it weren’t so stupid. It is going to be quite a show, plenty of visuals. It has only one point, and that is indeed about sex.
Gay people get my gruding respect for the expert and highly efficacious way they have achieved so much in only a few years.
But – I like the Jewish way. Their way is the Greek way. My way is the Hebrew way. Greek culture is widely admired and studied, but nobody is praying to Zeus. Lots of people are praying to Hashem. The parade people want us all to go back to the Greek way, which did not work long-term, for either the Greeks, or the Vikings.
A lot of people on this thread have bought the silly nonsense that sex is harmless.
That is so funny I could spill my soup.
But everybody is welcome to more soup.
There is something delightful about the ignorance here. You are all good Jews and you are too pure to be touched by this yuck or even to know what in the world is going on. I have had to make my way for a long time, so I have seen a few things. At least I think for myself, instead of piously and mindlessly ingesting Shibboleths and party lines. Not this old girl.
Note carefully: the core engine, which drives EVERYTHING ELSE in Judeo Christian society is hetero monagamy.
If you don’t believe me, ask Rabbi Yo.
I can certainly understand why folks in Jerusalem feel insulted (and worse) by this event. No doubt it’s a provocation, as JM says. But as a practical matter, gay visibility isn’t going away, and I’m not sure it’s practical (or a good idea– see, e.g., Ted Haggard) to shove the visibility genie back in the bottle.
If you want to preserve monogamous/heterosexual-only marriage, you’d best be shrewd in picking your battles. The gay marriage movement is well-led, as JM observes. Opponents may be best off keeping their powder dry for legislative and judicial battles to come.
There are people who will never be straight no matter what. There are people who will never be gay no matter what. There is a large group in the middle of the bell curve who will more or less go along with whatever the program is. That is the problem. This is not about 5% of the population – not eventually.
I wish life were easier.
Come on. That is a hairless under-age esthetic, even if achieved artificially, with wax and depilatories. It’s the message they are sending. It’s their ideal.
It’s not just a provocation, it’s an education. That is the biggest problem.
No, I do not agree. Opponents have to keep the population on their side. That won’t be achieved by letting people feel whatever they want to feel. You can make anybody feel almost anything. Especially if you have talent, a big budget, and have spent a lifetime learning how to best convince, both publicly and … privately.
I agree that Skokie and Jerusalem are different incidents. All examples are unique. echo pointed out some of the contrasts as I attempted to point where to find comparisons. Not identical but I contend there are basic principles that allow analogies: Questions of where we draw lines between rioting and civil disobedience (From looking at some of the footage in Jerusalem I’d say this is a pertinent question); and how we define the rules of engagement when it comes to protest and counterprotest… Fred Phelps/military funerals are neither Skokie nor Jerusalem. The recent incident in one of our fine ivy league schools where liberal students crossed the line… none of these situations are indentical but have some common issues.
If, as echo may be saying, this is an internal Israeli/Jewish matter, it is still taking place in a democratic state with supposedly democratic values. The Haredim (I think Muffti stressed this) don’t yet decide public policy or maintain a political majority. Nevertheless there’s clear disanalogy (love that word, thanks Muffti) and that this is a unique situation – which would make for some interesting discussion. I’d love to hear other thoughts (without yelling) as to why it’s different, as echo has already expressed.
I don’t think you can say, in all seriousness, my support of free speech and expression would extend to public sex and nudity. Principles of free speech are not absolute. In democratic society free speech is governed by generally accepted societal/community norms – this was fought over in the 70s in regards to pornography. It’s a utilitarian concept – greatest good for the greatest number, majority rules… but not just a simple majority, which is why we have a system of of checks and balances, to insure against a “tyranny of the majority”. Generally accepted societal norms are codified into law. Public fornication and most instances of public nudity have been deemed against community norm, been made illegal and therefore not protected by free speech. That’s one is easy.
Muffti – generally you’re right about U.S. courts and it’s sad because you’re more and more right everyday. Tommorow will have some affect on that. I pointed out in the Skokie case the majority and the dissenters of the opinion were mixed as far as their biases to illustrate the complexity of the issue. I can only imagine what the Israeli Supreme Court goes through with this.
And thanks for the props on my humor but please don’t encourage me…
Jewish Mother, just a small note: Vikings were doing very well overall until their influence started to wane due to a combination of political-economical issues, not because of a religion containing Odin, Thor, etc. or other rites they may have practiced.
The Viking family concept was based on heterosexual monogamy even before the slow transformation to a Judeo-Christian society.
Initially Vikings considered the Christian God as just one extra deity in their polytheistic arsenal from which to seek help when needed. It was later that the Viking kings became ultimately convinced that monotheism was preferable to polytheism, i.e. Christianity was a much more lucrative business and offered a better way of controlling the population (for example, “the king is the next from God”, that sort of thing).
I am a pragmatist. The Vikings lost. So there must have been something about the way they thought and operated which was bested by something more effective.
Scholarship says women did not fare well under the Vikings, but I am no genius and I can’t cite sources.
I am a pragmatist, and I don’t think female separatism has a future for the mass of the people. I don’t think that’s wonderful or terrible, I just think it is so.
I am a pragmatist and I think the traditional Jewish way has an astonishingly long success story, and I want to keep it. It does not just FEATURE hetero monagamy, it insists that that is ALL one gets. Nothing on the side. Wince if you want, but it is the oldest continually practiced culture on earth. (The Chinese culture is 2,000 years old, not 4,000. The emperor Chin lived 2,000 years ago and organized China, which bears his name.)
With respect, Judaism is twice that age.
The point is, gay culture and straight culture cannot coexist, long-term. One will eventually drive out the other. That is very unfortunate, from certain perspectives, but I am a pragmatist, and it is so.
(Consider this: marriage-free, religion-free workers are easier to exploit. They don’t have to get home for candle-lighting. You can transfer them anywhere – no children in school, no wife who doesn’t want to move away from her family. You can work them all hours, seven days. Look at the lawyers, the young brokers. Religion PROTECTS the worker. Who knew?)
I am for Sabbath Capitalism. It used to exist when I was young! That involves realism for six days, then “go away and don’t bother me” on the seventh day. First realism, then transcendentalism, because they are both aspects of the truth about life, and Judaism has a good balance.
And it allows for a place for woman – her moods, her children and her supposed cooties. Not always a great place, but at least SOME role, and specific recognition.
The free-market sexuality mentioned on this thread is odd, coming from liberals. I thought you guys did not like unfettered, laissez-faire, free markets.
I am for a gentler system. It allows for enforced commitment to someone who is having a very bad hair day, or year, because you made them a promise, and you have to keep it, or else. That can happen to anyone! Anyone can lose a job, get a bad haircut, burn the roast, and put on ten pounds because they weren’t thinking. Or had a baby.
It is natural for men to prefer the company of men a lot of the time, that’s just the way it is. Women need protection from that, or they will be de-invented. Indeed, women have already been mostly de-invented, QUA WOMEN.
One used to have a right to a woman’s life because one was were born one. Not now. Everybody wants to know how many degrees you have. And the more you have, the fewer children you will have, because your time is so valuable, the opportunity cost is too high. But no degrees, and you will be by yourself.
The women prized today are willing to have almost no children. Maybe one, in the remote future, when “we can afford it and feel like it” which is often never.
That is why “go forth and multiply” was aimed at men. It’s the men who pay for it, and often are not especially enamoured of the whole thing.
Of course, “an educated woman can nurse her baby between judicial proceedings, in the back of the judges’ chambers, while discussing strategy with her client.” Yeah, right. And the moon is made of green cheese.
Women have to be so clever to get their rights these days. And they are not naturally clever or strategic. They are naturally innocent. Not stupid. Just very pure. If you don’t believe me, look around at all those girlfriends among your acquaintance. It can be upsetting to watch, as they take whatever company they can get, as their fertile years slip by. People are too nice! We need more tigresses! We need Lysistrata! We need the Torah. And we don’t need those three infertile rivals at the top of this thread.
I am a pragmatist.
Muffti has really lost the train of this argument completely. But let him pick on a few threads.
Echo, you claimed:
Muffti has no idea how many way syou want to twist this analogy but he thinks its unkosher to run togheter ALL the things you have been conflating. IN particular, here is a worthwhile distinction:
A is a GOOD lifestyle vs. A is a VALID lifestyle choice.
Muffti never was out to argue that being gay was a good lifestyle choice. It may be and probably is for some. It doens’t seem to be Muffti’s cup of tea. Muffti WAS out to argue that the Haredim are trying to use a technique that terrorists use htat he find reprehensible. Namely, terror.
As far as the validity of gay lifestyle goes, Muffti thinks it is a perfectly VALID lifestyle choice, even if it doesn’t stand out as a good one (nor is it a bad one in Muffti’s eyes). Similarly, your selling all your stocks or voting for MUffti’s least preferred political party is a valid choice. Not necssarily a good one.
So maybe Muffti has missed your point, but until you make the distinction you keep apparentl abusing clear, he finds it very difficult to keep track of what you are trying to get at.
Muffti agrees that sexuality is probably a pretty fluid thing. He doesn’t agree with JM about the number and is pretty sre that at present, our research into the genetic, societal and personal aspects of homosexuality are at a fairly primitive state. So he’s hard pressed to hold anything to firmly in this realm. Most likely, being a rather crudely defined category, there are many causes underlying it and its expression in populations.
The skokie – gay parade analogy is weak at some points, but the Nazis were americans (that’s why there rights were protected) in america. That’s the same country in Muffti’s book. and America is still confronting the issues of nazis and their kin adn their relative freedoms. So it’s not really THAT stretched.
People in Florence and ancient greece did not HAVE to get married. Where did you get that from?!?
Finally, the gay community is marching for a whole host of reasons. You can interpret their motives as you like and put rather radical interpretations on their literature as you see fit. But Muffti sees no sign that they want supremacy in their literature or otherwise.
Actually echo, I’m far from trying to tell you what to think and have no urge to address your viewpoints. Please don’t turn this into a personal debate. I’m not twisting your words because I’m not addressing them (except your point about the difference between Skokie and Jerusalem is that the pride march is an internal Jewish matter).
You do bring up the core issue – the conflict between free speech/right to assembly and sensitivity. I’m saying that’s what makes it complicated. I won’t argue with you that the march might have been unwise. Would banning it have been wiser in the long run?
As for the rest of my comments, agree with what you will and leave the rest. But please don’t make it sound like I’m pulling these things out of my ass (oops, Fruedian slip). I don’t make things up or am being tricky. I was drawing on the writings of the political philosophers that have shaped my thinking.
I’m still curious to hear, from any commenter, what makes this conflict between sensitivity and free speech different from other incidences I brought up.
Jewish Mother your posts reek of the sentiment: I am old and wise and have been through a lot and am more knowledgable of the “real” ways of the world than anyone else posting here who might find my pragmatism to be more like cynicism; anyone who might object to statements like women “are not naturally clever or strategic”; anyone who in their “purity” doesn’t realise all the sordid details and ruined lives behind homosexuality. Well, speaking as a card carrying homosexual since kindergarten (1977) who is neither a “top” nor “bottom” (how can tht be?) who has never had anal surjury to heal the wounds of unorthodox intercourse, who is free of std’s (and the same being true for all my gay friends, many of whom have been married for quite a few years now and are very happy and thriving; in fact one couple is raising two beautiful children – one through adoption and 1 by artifical insemination) I would like to provide a counter-example to what I perceive as your negativity towards homosexuals. And don’t tell me you have nothing against me, but only the “gay community,” because there really is no such thing as THE gay community anymore; we are as diverse as str8’s. Yes, we are a force that is changing society (in my view for the better) and a threat to Judeo-christian-islamic religion as interpreted by the fundamentalists, but know that my spirit will not be vanquished by your arrogant, intolerant “pragmatism.”
To Jewish Mother:
“but it [Judaism] is the oldest continually practiced culture on earth.”
Actually, no. The Australian aborigine culture beats everyone else with a large margin.
And Vikings as a group didn’t “lose” or “disappear” suddenly. Their belief systems changed but the people persisted. I personally place people first, religion second, but I understand your argument – like you said, the Vikings as they were known during the peak of their glory days do not exist anymore. The culture changed.
However, not all aspects of the past are lost – there are still certain Midsummer day rituals in the Nordic countries, and those originate from old “pagan” traditions. For example, on that day bonfires are burnt e.g. in Finland and Sweden, and in Sweden people dance around a pole.
So, the culture of people adapts, it has to be flexible. If it’s too rigid and incapable of evolving at least slightly it might end up vanishing as the world changes. Flexibility is needed to deal with “blows” from the outside. Just look at India, they assimilated basically everything that was thrown at them, and the current culture is a big amalgam of everything, with some really old bits existing still, of course.
George, I mean no disrespect to anyone or the gay community. My negative attitude is toward assertive gay politics. Politics can be discussed, although delicately, when people’s safety and sense of personal rightness is at stake, which yours is. What I advocate is that everybody live and let live. People should stay out of each other’s hair and way. I am for private lives that are private. That would be an unsatisfactory compromise, I acknowledge with sorrow. I am not ignorant of the issues and I get the point.
You acknowledge that gay assertive politics conflict directly with Judeo-Christian life. (Forget the other religion you mentioned, that is another matter.) You mention fundamentalists. My point is this goes way beyond fundamentalists. And anyway, fundamentalists are human, too. Do you have a right to be eliminationist about them?
What am I asking you to do? Make a soldierly sacrifice? That is asking a lot.
Nobody ever did that?
In your place I would probably be doing and saying the same things you are. I just don’t think it is a good idea, in the big picture.
I freely admit life can be horribly unfair! But that is nobody’s fault.
This is a specifically Jewish discussion.
This is about Jerusalem.
This is a Jewish web site.
The Jews need a birthrate. Jewish tradition is tightly wrapped around hetero monagamy as core cultural, spiritual and social engine, not just a way to be happy with your favorite person.
And even I conceded Tel Aviv to the gay movement! No problem! Tel Aviv is not Jerusalem. I wanted them to leave Jerusalem to the “religious crazies” because “religiously crazy people need a place of their own, too”. What’s wrong with that? Live and let live?
I wish everybody could be happy but I don’t think that is possible. As a Jew and a woman I am sticking up for my own kind. As you are. So understand.
Jewish Mother, what I like most about you, apart from being a creative and at times frustratingly reasonable thinker, is that you are brutally honest and speak from the heart, sticking your neck out and saying non-pc things others would be afraid to say. I just want to inject my own note of optimism into this discussion: my lesbian friend married a rabbi 3 years ago and they adopted a beautiful at-risk baby (named Dov) who is of course as much a Jew in their eyes as Ella, a recent arrival. I have faith that homosexuals and fundamentalists can inhabit the same universe if we try hard enough at it. As a non-Jew and a man, I will remember you and stick up for your kind as well as for myself.
This thread has slid into a discussion of the merits of homosexuality – which is really not the issue in this case. The religious Jews of Jeruasalem generally get on just fine in a diverse city teeming with locals and tourists who don’t live as they do. What has sparked this broad protest – and moved many non-haredi traditional Jews to join in this fight – is the underlying story of selective application of “human rights” -and suspension of democratic governance by the court in service of the secular elite’s agenda.
Returning to that issue – muffti wrote:
Muffti implies nothing about haredim – Muffti HAPPILY implies something about RIOTERS… Muffti in no way endorses shutting down Haredi right to free speech. Muffti thinks it’s downright reprehensible and any ‘leftie playbook’ that endorses this tactic should be, well, not burned, but kept as a relic and a warning for future good citizens of the world.
– – – – – – – – – – –
Yet you are, in effect, endorsing the silencing of the haredim – together with the majority of Jerusalemite who had no problem with their elected city council’s decision not to approve this divisive parade.
And for all your grandstanding about how reprehensible these actions are – you have blithely ignored the backstory that puts the court’s actions – and subsequent haredi protests – in context. By picking up the narrative at the point at which the haredim can be called hoodlums, you are in effect endorsing the silencing of the haredim by adopting and promoting the court’s cover story for its “reprehensible” actions.
– so when you write:
What Muffti is objecting to is the ’solution’ of rioting in the streets.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
you have misread/misrepresented the rioting as an isolated ‘solution’ rather than as a reaction – an act of desperation and valid protest to a mounting regime of inequity.
You have bought and promulgated the secular elite’s line that the haredi riots are unprovoked attacks on the hunky-dory rule of law that existing previously, springing unprovoked from the fevered minds of some backward Rebbes.
This is akin to the tendency of many lefties to swoop in just in time to catch the “disproportionate” Israeli response to Arab attack, and brand the Israelis “aggressors” for defending themselves. I’m glad your so familiar with academia, muffti, because this truncation of the chain of events to fit ideological preconceptions is rife in academia – as I am sure you know.
I put it to you that your choice to focus on the rioting in isolation is similar. Your choice to start at that point allows construction of a narrative that fits your own preconceptions and your own desire to strike what you think of as a fair/liberal/progressive stance.
To those of us living under a regime that increasingly resembles a banana republic, the frustration of the haredim is our own, and their taking to the street entirely understandable – this is what “speaking truth to power” really looks like. Your sermonizing about the inadmissibility of violence seems to us to be as out of touch as the contextless condemnations of Israeli self-defence that we have heard these many, bloody years.
Tyranny is overcome by people taking to the streets and saying “I’m not going to take this anymore.” That is what is happening here.
So when you write:
Do you agree that the right to free speech does NOT entail the right to have your way?
– – – – – – – – – – – – – –
This is bitterly ironic – and betrays the closed, truncated reality you have constructed to explain the current situation. It is the promoters of the rally that were unable to tolerate “not getting their way” in a democratic system. They have turned to a court that has repeatedly trampled the notion of universal fundamental rights to further a minority agenda.
And the “academic” approach’s selective parsing of reality always seems to closely parallel the left’s ideological labeling of the actors, rather than the merits of the case or the facts in reality. The haredim represent backward, restrictive Judeo-Christian morality, and therefore they MUST be wrong, and evil. The court is imposing an agenda that liberal-leaning folks feel reflects their own values, so they turn a blind eye to its abuses – Western culture’s demand that one convince one’s opponent rather than impose one’s will only applies in one direction: it’s OK to shut up those backward fundamentalists, and if they dare to riot against our decision, we will simply start the story there, with wide-eyed pollyannah shock at their “violence” and “divisiviness”.
But things are a little different out here in reality – and more and more Israelis have caught on to the process of disenfranchisement.
You further ask:
How is this not victimology politics? Please explain because Muffti is really not understanding the term very well anymore if it doesn’t apply to the very method you are trying to use in protecting your favourite group?
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Victimology politics is used to project moral superiority, thus shutting down further discussion and allowing unchallenged imposition of one’s own agenda.
To take a classic example: the historical suffering of black Americans is cranked up to an emotional fever-pitch to justify affirmative action and other problematically preferential programs, a generation after any real institutional prejudice was removed from society, decades after a black middle class has arisen.
The purpose of the victimhood narrative is to sidestep substantial, factual debate (Is affirmative action fair? Was aid to unwed mothers actually beneficial to them, and to society?) and instead substitute a primarily emotional argument that acts as a tar baby (to use an apt phrase!) – it’s impossible to counter the emotional argument of the professional victim without being branded a heartless villian.
It also uses guilt to suppress dissent – most white Jewlicious readers have endured various high school and college “sensitivity” courses whose goal was to make us feel guilty for things done to black people decades – and even generations – before we were born.
Muffti – you are clever enough to see that none of my arguments point in that direction – I am not interested in securing preferrential treatment for the groups I “protect” (although it’s quite telling that you – as an expert in the “academic mindset” – automatically use that language of “protected groups”…)
I seek equal, impartial implementation of basic civil rights, and respect by the judiciary for the actions of the duly elected representatives of the people in the other branches of Israel’s democracy.
I don’t seek to shut up the lefties – but I want them to play by the same rules as the rest of us.
This was made clear to many last year – the adults in the settler movement did not turn to violence, did not oppose the goverment’s decision. But they did have a valid right to assemble and protest, to show the large numbers of people who disagreed with the expulsion, or with how the decision was reached.
I – and my political brothers – were definitely prepared to engage the country in mature debate, and to accept the government’s ruling. But our fundamental right to speak our peace in such a real political debate was denied us.
By the same court that denied the residents of Jerusalem their voice.
Can you shake yourself from your “academic” mindset sufficiently to see the difference between that and victimology politics?
Can you see how starting the narrative with the charedi riots serves the narrative of gay “victimhood” and secular purity – when in fact they are backed by a secular oligarchy that is trampling democracy?
Or maybe you are such an advanced “academic” thinker that you really don’t care how the agenda you agree with is imposed upon others?
If that’s so – please don’t lecture anyone about the rule of law, and how awful it is for people to riot in the streets.
Muffti appologizes for ignoring back story: Muffti agrees that that isn’t fair to the Haredim. And he appologizes because B-D is right. Context matters.
Nonetheless, he takes issue still with much of what you say. He’s too tired to deal with all of it right now, but let him ask one question: he still doesn’t see how the ‘silencing’ of the Haredim, in this instance, is not simply complaining that the Haredim didn’t get their way. Muffti assumes you agree that it is not ok to riot anytime you don’t get your way.
Furthermore, Muffti thinks its unfair to accuse him of playing victimology politics, especially in this instance. Look, there was an issue: may the gays march in Jersualem or not? The gays won. Surely just the fact that you lose on an issue doesn’t entail taht your freedom of SPEECH was curtailed. Otherwise, in every issue that is controversial, someone freedom of speech is curtailed. So, Muffti asks for elaboration.
More tommorow. Muffti’s starting to wish he believed in God so he could ask him for strength to carry on this train of argument, which is clearly more fundamental than he had at first realized it would be. 🙂
Muffti’s problem is that he’s viewing things from an American perspective, which, unlike Israel, is a constitutional republic. Under B-D’s approach, the majority is impermissibly “silenced” when a court rules against it.
In America, it’s precisely when speech is unpopular, even repugnant, that the courts have to step in to enable such speech, subject to restrictions, to be heard. US courts are fairly regularly called upon to issue contramajoritarian rulings.
But that’s because we have a Constitution. Israel doesn’t, and B-D’s approach of leaving everything to the majority and its elected representatives (always? everywhere?) is a colorable one whose merits may be debated.
I’ll take the Constitution anytime, myself.
I agree with BD’s comment that the debate isn’t about the merit’s of one’s sexual preference over another. And Mr. Morrissey’s rather astute observation about Israel’s political system further exposes the problem when I create analogies between American and Israeli free speech issues – on a legal, not ethical basis. Still Tom, I do see some system of checks and balances in Israel’s system (albeit not based on a Constitution) that help protect against a “tyranny of the majority” (pardon the quote marks but it’s J.S. Mills’ line). Otherwise, I have to echo Muffti’s sentiments and admit I’m blue in the face. Speaking of echo…
Morrisey is correct about Israel’s lack of a constitution, but wrong to think I like things that way.
However, at this point in our history it’s not the “elected representatives” branch of the government that is the problem – besides the general sliminess and corruption that surrounds politics everywhere. In fact, our wacko proportional parliamentary scheme doesn’t seem to produce governments with much unfettered, uncompromised authority.
It’s the Supremes that are acting like a mafia, and overstepping the bounds of their role in misplaced “activism”. It’s the Supremes who are imposing a minority, elite opinion on The Rest Of Us.
I’m all for a constitution that separates the branches of government, defines their roles and authority, and sets up checks and balances between them. Or even a set of so-called “Basic Laws” that achieves the same thing.
Muffti agrees: constitutions and separation of powers? Good thing.
But, B-D, Muffti still wants the one quesiton he’s been pushing all along answered: what is the difference between the right to speech and the right to have your will taken seriously.
By the way, Muffti didn’t use the language of ‘protected group’….he said ‘favoured group’. Unless he mispelt it whcih is likely 🙂
Thanks, by the way, for the clear explantion of vicitmology politics. Muffti isn’t so ‘advanced’ that he is in favour of imposing agendas by any means necessary. He may be in the wrong, but he doesn’t think he is a hypocrit. But given that you want fair impartial debate and the like, and given that the right to assembly is a basic right, why do you think the gay community doesn’t have the right to hold a parade even if there are dissenters?
Muffti is starting to think that what you are arguing is this:
The objectors to the expulsions had their rights crushed by teh supreme court who imposed an agenda that was not in their jurisdiction to impose.
Therefore, the right to free speech was not respected by the courts.
Thus, the court bestows rights in unprincipled ways.
Therefore, teh haredim have the right to riot in the streets since their right to free speech has been squashed.
But surely something is amiss in this argumnet. THe fact that the court has previously suspended the right to free speech is tragic and wrong. But, IN THIS PARTIUCLARL CASE, have the residents of jerusalem had their right to free speech squashed w/r/t the gay parade? Muffti isn’t seeing the cases where this has happened. He just sees a decision that didn’t go their way. And the rioting aftermath.
So, once again, Muffti asks for clarity on this. Please be gracious enough to provide him. Without snide comments about his being an academic 🙂
Muffti – here’s a few points to read while drinking your orange juice tomorrow morning:
Muffti wrote:
he still doesn’t see how the ’silencing’ of the Haredim, in this instance, is not simply complaining that the Haredim didn’t get their way.
– – – – – – – – – – –
It’s not complaining that that the Haredim didn’t get their way.
It’s complaining by Haredi voters that their city council “didn’t get their way” – that they weren’t left to do their official duties.
Instead a court that has already proven its extremely selective concern for freedom of assembly stepped in and overruled them.
further:
Muffti assumes you agree that it is not ok to riot anytime you don’t get your way.
– – – – – – – – – –
… and it’s also not OK to get a sympathetic, axe-grinding court to impose your will on others when you don’t get your way.
which brings us to:
Look, there was an issue: may the gays march in Jersualem or not? The gays won. Surely just the fact that you lose on an issue doesn’t entail that your freedom of SPEECH was curtailed.
– – – – – – – – – – – – –
But the point is that the gays LOST – they submitted their application for a parade permit just like dozens of other organizations that seek to march through this internationally symbolic city. Their application was turned down for numerous reasons – just like many other applications.
That is the point at which due process and the notion of a “fair fight” end in this story.
The organizers of the parade then sought out a powerful, sympathetic oligarchy to override the result of due democratic process.
So the same court that connived to curtail the timely political speech and assembly of Israeli citizens – by refusing to even hear appeals that EXACTLY parallel the gay activists’ appeal – suddenly took this case to its bosom, and busied itself protecting the imaginary “right” of foreigners to thumb their noses at Israelis in their own city, at a time when there is no legal challenge to the status of gays that would make this march real political speech.
The gays LOST on due process, then looked for a club with which to beat those who disagreed with them into submission. A way to “beat the system” – the “system” being democracy and the rule of law…
And the Supreme Court volunteered its services as that club.
AND this episode fits and continues the pattern of one-sided, selective enforcement of these basic rights, according to a political agenda.
Get it?
May I just mumble that an entire week of continuous city-wide activism is not a parade. English is English and a parade is a parade. You parade, then after that you go home. Why not a month, by your reasonings, or three months? Only budget constrains, from what you are saying.
They are making it this long, a week, to tire out their opponents. They want to be the last ones standing, to win the day. Their opponents after all are busy, and will have to quit first. They are not imported, and not being maintained. They have jobs. And, not to put too fine a point on it, FAMILIES, that demand their time and energy.
It is odd that I seem to keep having to jerk the men back into the real world. Maybe that is the role of a Jewish woman.
OK, this is hte 3rd time Muffti tries to post this comment. And then he shall give up.
Muffti disagrees with much of what you said: the end point of democratic process is not city councillours. Democracy and freedom of speech go hand in hand and when a parade is denied for reasons having to do with apparent discrimination, people have the right to seek a higher tribunal. And this isn’t foreigners, this is Israeli citizens who are putting forth the request. The fact that many in attendance are foreign doesn’t make it THEIR right that is being respected or ignored. We both know that.
Now, we have a strange situation here. We have a court that is clearly agenda based. But we have a city council that at least prima facie is denying the gays the right to march on discriminatory bases. When that happens, in a democracy that respects free speech, one has a right to appeal to courts who are the proper arbiters. The courts rule
(Muffti ins’t quite clear why yo think their decision in this case was anti-democratic or amounted to judicial activism. They didn’t make law, they overruled a city council decision – in a country with a constitution like the states it would have been a fairly trivial affair to get any legit court to extend them the right to march) and the orthodox complain.
They have a right to be upset, Muffti doesn’t deny taht. and they have a right to expres their opinion, which they clearly did even before the rioting. No one was in any doubt ast ot he opinion of hte Haredim.
But none of this really helps with the real problem: one does not have the right to riot in the streets. that is as anti-democractic as ANY of the offense B-D lists above. And police should generally NOT give in to threats of terror.
Muffti –
1. You use the words “apparent” and “prima facie” to hedge your charge of discrimination – perhaps because you know that’s a kinda flimsy charge in this case?
In fact, the democratic process for not-particularly-political speech such as this usually does end with local enforcement of decency laws, and with other measures of cost/impact on the local community.
Regarding the foreigners – this march was promoted as a bookend to a previous march in Rome, which drew a quarter of a million marchers from around the world.
In contrast, the last few Jerusalem gay pride marches drew a few thousand.
So there is definitely an upping of the ante – again, with no challenge to the legal status of gays in Israel on the table. Why does the relative handful of Israelis exercising their right to free speech require a “posse” that dwarfs them?
It becomes increasing clear that the focus and purpose of this march was not (just) engaged political speech, but a rub-their-noses-in-it assertion of raw political clout – which is even clearer when we consider that Rome and Jerusalem were targeted.
It is perfectly within the city council’s scope to deny such a march – if only because of the costs involved in policing and cleaning up after it.
2. I’m glad you agree that the haredim have a right be upset, and to express their opinion – could you suggest a venue for their public expression, or wager to give odds that such a public display would even be allowed by the court?
They’re rioting because entire sectors of the population have been systematically prevented from just such public expression.
Last year, one entire side of the political map was shut out of the mass media, and not allowed to assemble or protest in public – to the point where police boarded buses to keep citizens from traveling down south. Teenagers distributing leaftlets for the non-PC side of the debate were arrested – and the court system seriously considered sending these suburban kids to ideologically pure, secular group homes for “re-education”. Which included curing them of their religious fervor.
And that stormy period was of a piece with a larger, decades-long pattern in which this court has attempted to shut down the religious courts, annex to itself the chief Rabbinate’s authority in conversions and other matters, and force Orthodox real estate developers to open their shopping malls on Shabbat.
Could you please describe just how you think a haredi – or any right-winger, or any member of the silent majority of traditionally Jewish Israelis – should feel at this juncture?
If it were you, how trusting would you be that your turn will come to speak publicly, unfettered?
Unlike previous incidents in which the knitted kippahs and others did not get involved, in this case they are – because they all feel that the court’s meddling must be stopped. And that the corrupt, unscrupulous oligarchy respects only brute force – political or otherwise.
Once the public has lost confidence that the system is basically fair and equitable, it’s not so simple to put the genies of mistrust back in the bottle. Things will not get better until there is real reform.
This riot is a long time coming. You can’t parse it by jumping on the tail end of events.
Oh, enough of this already. Ben David, Israel is not a theocracy. The High Court is a serious court with excellent practitioners who know what they are doing. If their rulings conflict with the halachic rulings of orthodoxly observant Jews, that may be unfortunate in that it could cause these individuals some personal conflicts but that has no bearing on what the Court should do and how the state of Israel should behave. It’s enough that rabbinic courts control basic aspects of people’s lives with their control over how Jews are defined as well as marriages and divorces.
As for rioting, it is always inexcusable. Peaceful demonstrations are always fine and welcome, but rioting crosses boundaries especially when it isn’t justified. In this case it’s not justified because just as the Haredim have a right to demonstrate, so do all the transexuals and homosexuals in Israel.
And please don’t give us this story about how “your side” was shut out of the media during the disengagement. You got plenty of media coverage, it’s just that most Israelis disagreed with you and with your characterization of what was going on as similar to Nazism.
Where did Muffti call the march/parade/sodomy exhibition “political” speech?
I remember Muffti also saying the Haredim have a perfect right to counter-protest. Why would the courts deem a peaceful counterprotest illegal? Seems to me Muffti has a problem with the method of the counterprotest. Meaning the riot.
Some day the Rabbinate may well run Israel B-D, but not today. Today Israel is still a democracy, with democratic institutions albeit without a Constitution. Do what you can to change it. Go to the streets, the newspapers, t.v.. Organize like-minded people. Start blogs or get the old printing presses going. Whatever you do, do it without violence.
Muffti, the U.S. courts are not that homogenous. Especially the lower courts – you do have to take it region by region. If the march were to be held in the bible belt (which, it is being argued, is akin to holding the march in Jerusalem), the local courts may very well have issued an injunction. Probably would have. Judicial activism can go both ways, as the Bush Supreme Court has shown.
Speaking of media coverage, how else would the world know that Olmert has an openly gay daughter? He should call Dick Cheney. Also, there’s talk of postponing the march because of the rioting in East Jerusalem over Beit Hanoun – any word on that?
The Muddled One rides in to save the day – or at least obscure the truth in a cloud of bluster.
Quoth he:
Oh, enough of this already. Ben David, Israel is not a theocracy.
– – – – – – – – – – – – –
We know that. The point is that it ain’t much of a democracy, either.
More Muddling:
The High Court is a serious court with excellent practitioners who know what they are doing.
– – – – – – – – – – – – –
… I’m sure they do. But what they are doing has nothing to do with impartial defense of basic civil rights in Israel.
One can almost see the enormous effort you are putting into reinflating the balloon, projecting once again the nobility and progressiveness under which the leftist elite covers its long knives, its selective application of basic rights.
further:
If their rulings conflict with the halachic rulings of orthodoxly observant Jews
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
– that is to be expected. The problem is that their rulings – taken together – undercut the foundations of the democratic rule of law. They treat citizens and situations differently based on an ideological agenda.
Are all the American voters who’ve passed anti-gay-marriage proposals trying to impose a theocracy? No – they’ve just had it up to here with the leftist elite imposing its agenda through the courts.
Same thing here – except that there are no mechanisms for such a public referendum in Israel, and our legislature is less responsive to the people for various reasons. (Those of us interesting in moving Israel from socialist hegemony to democracy are working on that, too…)
So they’ve taken to the streets because there is no other recourse.
This is akin to the Ukranians surrounding their Parliament to protest corrupt power grabbing, and similar situations.
No doubt from those within the bastions of secular power, it looks like the barbarians are at the gate. But that is not the situation.
Look at what’s happening simultaneous to this issue – Olmert brings in Lieberman, and pushed forward on electoral reform. He’s a clever fellow – he know that this is about a growing sense of disenfranchisement and distrust of the system.
The notion that people in such a situation shouldn’t take to the streets is ludicrous – again, it’s an attempt to assert that everything is hunky-dory, and that the protesters – rather than the hegemony – are the real danger to democracy.
People have taken to the streets – just like in the Ukraine, just like in Berlin, just like in Yugoslavia – because they’re no longer buying it.
No doubt that rattles those who’ve affiliated with the “progressive” elite, and applauded as it’s imposed their agenda in a heavy-handed way.
Now comes the result – people who no longer trust the system, and are responding to the force used against them with their own force.
This is what cultural revolution looks like.
Ramon Marcos wrote:
I remember Muffti also saying the Haredim have a perfect right to counter-protest. Why would the courts deem a peaceful counterprotest illegal?
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
– yet they already have a track record of suppressing and disallowing just such peaceful protests. An entire sector of the Israeli populace could not get a permit for political rallies about a very urgent national issue. This court refused to hear their appeals. And the government-controlled broadcast media refused to let spokespeople appear on news and politics shows.
Later on, Olmert tried to “show those people a lesson” with a disproportionate, violent response at Amona – a situation that was itself made more tense and violent by the previous, heavy-handed silencing of opinion.
So there is very good reason for large parts of the population to believe that they will not be allowed to peacefully counterprotest – the court’s meddling in this case is a not-so-subtle flaunting of power.
So when you write:
Seems to me Muffti has a problem with the method of the counterprotest. Meaning the riot.
– – – – – – – – – – – – –
So do we all. But it is pollyannaish to ignore that the rioters are already disenfranchised, and to go on as if this is all taking place within a clean and decent democracy. It isn’t.
I definitely agree that rioting is unacceptable. The fact that it’s happening indicates that Israeli democracy is in trouble – that many citizens already feel they have no alternative.
Parroting the left’s projection of itself as noble defender of Western democracy is not going to help the situation. Because the left’s totally partial, agenda-driven distortion of Western principles is what has caused the disenfranchisement.
Not because they’ve contradicted halacha – but because whole sectors of the populace cannot even speak or assemble freely, as they should in a working democracy.
Rioting in a banana republic is a positive thing. It’s the first step in clearing out the rot and installing a better system.
That’s just about where we are. And Olmert’s rather sudden focus on promoting electoral reform – or at least appearing to do so – shows that he knows it too.
B-D, the rioting is by a small handful of people who represent a small group within Israel. Have tehy been mistreated? In some cases, sure. But why does historical mistreatment give on the right to riot as a way to show your disgust and disdain?
AS for being pollyanish, Muffti can’t help but think that you are painting a rather heroic, rosy picture of hte rioters. They don’t go around saying that the court is unfair. They don’t even seem to have any interest in standing up for freedom of speech. They just seem to be anti-this parade. Notice they stopped rioting when teh gays backed off of the parade. Is that a great sign that Jerusalem haredim have an ideological objection to the structure of the courts that caused rioting? Bullshit. Muffti is strating to think that you are really a master craftsmen, cleverly fitting the haredim into a heroic mold you want and the left into the demonic mold that is holding them down. The picture is clearly not so simple on either side.
In any case, as Muffti has been sayign, there is no reason to think IN THIS CASE that hte haredim have been denied a right to speak freely. No one is in teh dark as to how they feel. The rabbis have had ample time to consult with police and city councillours.
And as one parting shot, Muffti should say that the fact htat the ‘right’ was discriminated against by the courtsa nd police during the disengagment may show a bias; it certainly doesn’t follow from that that the courts acted wrong in this case. Otherwise, any time anyone freedom of speech is protected by teh courts, the haredim should go ape shit because their freedom of speech was trampled upon previously. Showing a court is ideologically biased is one thing; showing that it acted wrongly in a particular instance is another. And mUffti is still waiting for an argument for the latter. Please dont’ tell him that due porcess ended at hte city councillour stage. We both know that you have the right to appeal those decsision in court. As you should – city councillours are just as able to act discriminatorialy as courts are.
And man is Muffti’s spelling attrocrious.
Shabbat Shalom.
This Time report contains some of the craziest writing since the major news outlets discovered the internet. For example:
“It was billed as an apocalyptic showdown: A band of scared but stubborn gay Israelis who wanted to celebrate their sexuality on a march through Jerusalem, versus 100,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews who vowed to tear the gays into confetti-sized pieces for turning the Holy City into “Sodom.””
See? Democracy works! No apocalypse and no confetti-sized pieces of gays!
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1558015,00.html
Ben-David is right. Rabbi Elyashiv and Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and all the left-wingers like them should stop this negotiating and cutting deals with the Socialist Entity and let them have it! Clearly, all the real Charedim want is more Democracy. They’re all about that. That’s their thing!
Help save democracy! Scream! Yell! Scream at the gays some more!
It will help bring a brighter tomorrow.
Shavua Tov!
Muffti wrote:
B-D, the rioting is by a small handful of people who represent a small group within Israel.
– – – – – – – – – – – – –
They represent 12-15 percent of Israel’s population, or 20 percent of the Jewish population – and upwards of 40 percent of Jerusalem’s population.
Remind me: what percentage of the Israeli population is gay – 2 percent?
Do you REALLY want to go in this direction?
You ask:
Have they been mistreated?
– – – – – – – – –
Have the gays been mistreated? There are currently no active moves to change the already comfortable status of gays in Israel.
… do you REALLY want to go there?
(and can you see how examining numbers and grievance to determine “rights” shows the influence of victimology politics, the opposite of true impartiality?)
My purpose is NOT to justify the rioters.
Violent rioting is, by definition, an unjustifiable action IN A FAIR AND WORKING DEMOCRACY.
When the system is not fair – well, in the USA people have the right to bear arms precisely for such an eventuality.
What’s important is to UNDERSTAND why Jewish citizens of Israel feel compelled to take such a measure.
They are not doing it because they are fundamentalist Taliban seeking to impose a theocracy.
They are doing it because Israel is NOT a fair and working democracy from their perspective.
You want me to relate to THIS specific case?
OK – here is a brief history of the Jerusalem Gay Pride parade:
It started in 2001, when Olmert was mayor.
In his first year in office, Lupoliansky – Jersualem’s first haredi mayor – expressed objection to the parade, but did nothing to halt it.
By 2004 there were more haredim on the city council, and an attempt was made to stop the parade that year. It was appealed to the Supreme Court, which ordered that the parade go forward.
The court then levied a PERSONAL fine on Lupoliansky for 30,000 shekels.
This is totally unheard of in a fair, working democracy. With this move, the Court made the Jerusalem Gay Pride into a club in the ongoing cultural struggle in Israel – it adminstered a slapdown indicating that an unelected oligarchy would set the limits on his power.
I believe the correct phrase is “putting an uppity nigger in his place”.
Muffti – do you see now why I use the phrase “banana republic” to describe our current situation?
Emboldened by the court’s action, the local organizers of Gay Pride threw open the 2005 march to the world, attached it to the march in Rome, and planned the Mother Of All in-your-face slapdowns: from a small, local march of 2-3 thousand, it would swell to a carnival-like spectacle of around 100,000 marchers – most of them foreigners.
See that shrinking dot in your rear windshield, muffti? That’s the “but it’s just innocent free speech” folderol – rapidly receding from view as we learn more about the left/liberal side’s actions. It’s clear that Jerusalem Gay Pride was already being used as a club in the ongoing cultural war – and the unmistakable intent for 2005 was to show the residents of Jerusalem who was boss. To cow them so they would no longer step out of line – even if they got themselves elected.
All this with the full cooperation of the court – which during this time was forcing Orthodox real-estate developers to open their shopping malls on Shabbat (despite laws already on the books), inventing marital and parental rights for lesbian couples (without bothering to consult the legislature), and overriding rulings of the Rabbinical court system (again, directly contradicting standing law).
Unfortunately for the organizers, a series of events not only delayed the 2005 parade – they shook most Israelis’ trust in their government’s fairness, equity, and transparency, and revealed the oligarchy’s aimlessness and corruption. Which has resulted in a very receptive audience for the haredi protest.
We note that the haredim have halted their riots – now that the Gay Pride march has shrunk back down to a small, local – and morally justifiable – event.
With the clear understanding that rioting is not justified, that when it appears it’s an act of desperation and a symptom of a polity in extremis – understanding all that, where the haredim justified?
Hell, yeah.
This is how things get better in a banana republic.
If you want to see things clearly – and help Israel move towards an equable democracy – you really do have to get past your assumption that the system is OK here – the assumptions you and I are accustomed to making as Americans.
And you really do have to get past your sense of affinity with the left/liberal elite. It’s easy to like them if they are imposing an agenda you agree with – largely through the courts. And its easy to ignore the undemocratic way in which opinions you happen to agree with are imposed on others – especially easy if your social echo chamber confirms that those others are primitive fundamentalists.
But The Rest Of Us – here and in America – are not primitives. (Christian fundamentalists have a HIGHER rate of higher education than the US average – does that upset your underlying assumptions? The same is true of both settlers and Likudniks Israel – does THAT upset your underlying assumptions?)
And we’re not taking it anymore.
If you can’t get past that – if you can only see the haredim, the settlers, the entire right wing of American/Israeli politics – if you can only see these people as fundamentalist barbarians at the gate, you are in for one heck of a surprise in the coming decade.
And despite good intentions, you will find yourself on the side that is fighting AGAINST liberal, equable democracy.
“Violent rioting is, by definition, an unjustifiable action IN A FAIR AND WORKING DEMOCRACY… When the system is not fair – well, in the USA people have the right to bear arms precisely for such an eventuality.”
The Second Amendment: “A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.”
B-D, your knowledge of the U.S. Constitution is flawless. You have come to what is called “The Insurrectionist Theory of the Second Amendment.” In a nutshell, it and you state the Second Amendment calls for private militias and individual right to bear arms in order to check and balance against a tyrannical government. (Also to ensure the Southern states would have their own militias to protect against slave rebellions.)
Does the Second Amend. allow for a “Seven Days In May” scenario in which if enough like-minded people gather up enough arms to control of the country, an insurrection would then be a legitimate rebellion? Does the Second Amend. specify, as you say, when a democracy is no longer “fair and working”?
Subsequent articles in the Constitution ensured the Second Amend. doesn’t grant individuals a right to keep and bear arms for their own purposes” rather than as a part of the so-called militias under the control of the federal and state governments.
One time enough people got their hands on enough weapons, and were pissed off enough at the federal govt., to feel justified under the Second Amend. to rebel. It was called the Civil War.
The conflict between the opposing views on the Second Amend. has given jobs to many political scholars and constitutional lawyers. All of whom know a hell of a lot more than you and I do. I just wanted to throw a little info at you so that when you start invoking the U.S. Bill of Rights to explain the Haredim’s violent protest, that every little caveat (“fair and working democracy) you present in this debate defines you position more than you may want to think
(11-11) 04:00 PST Jerusalem — A group of gay Palestinian Americans canceled a planned pride march in East Jerusalem on Friday after one of them was beaten unconscious by a local man who said he was from the Waqf Muslim religious authority.
The beating incident occurred on the same day an Israeli gay pride rally went ahead as scheduled, though without a planned march through city streets. The march had been called off after threats by religious and right-wing opponents to mount huge counterdemonstrations.
(Here’s the link to this by the way – it’s the San Francisco Chronicle.)
In the East Jerusalem beating, two men — one wielding a knife — came looking for the group of gay Palestinian Americans who were staying at the Faisal Hostel near the Damascus Gate of the Old City. One of the assailants identified himself as being from the Waqf, the clerical trust that administers Muslim religious sites in the city.
“I’m pretty terrified right now,” said Daoud, an MBA student from Detroit who declined to give his full name. “We left the hostel immediately, but when my friend went back to collect some things, they were waiting for him. They asked if he was with ‘the homos’ and then started beating him.”
He said the victim, from Chicago, was badly beaten, knocked down a flight of stairs and left unconscious. The man, whose name was withheld for his safety, was taken to the El-Mokassed Hospital in East Jerusalem for treatment.
“It was very scary. These two guys came in and said they had heard we were planning to march. They drew a knife and said if we marched they would cut our heads off. They sounded like they meant it,” he said.
Daoud said nine gay Palestinian Americans had come to Jerusalem to join the pride march. “Maybe I was just being naive. I heard about the pride rally, and I thought it would be nice for us to do something together as a gay community,” he said. “We got a different kind of reception instead.”
Rotem Biran, 25, a hotel sales executive from Tel Aviv, said she was disappointed not to be able to march with the Palestinians from East Jerusalem. But by the time she arrived at the Faisal Hostel, Daoud and his friends had disappeared.
“Gay Palestinians are really afraid,” she said. “It’s not the same as being Jewish and gay. For them, it’s dangerous. They can’t really do anything openly in their own community because it’s so strict, so they come all the way to Tel Aviv to be with other gay people.”
Friday’s rally, held at the Hebrew University sports stadium, was a low-key affair that passed off largely peacefully. More than 2,000 participants were protected by about 3,000 police officers. One ultra-Orthodox protester who managed to sneak into the event was arrested after he jumped onstage and began screaming anti-gay slogans.
Across town, California-born David Sheen, a founder of the East Bay City Repair project in Oakland, was one of 30 gay activists who were arrested after trying to march to the stadium where the rally was being held. Sheen, 32, wore a pink shirt bearing the words “My God is a lesbian,” in Hebrew.
B-D,
OK, finally we get to something interesting and informative! Muffti thanks you for laying out (finally!) the sequence of events that you are talking about. (Sorry Muffti didn’t get back to this earlier but he’s been kinda busy.)
OK, a few quick words since the issue is quickly becoming passed now that the rally is over!
First, Muffti can see why levying a personal fine looks like an over-extension of the courts authority, but he woudl like to see the details fo the case. why exactly did the court say they were levying the fine? Is there any precedent for this? (These rae things Muffti is in teh dark about and hasn’t been able to find reliable information on).
Second, and more importantly, Muffti’s consultations with various experts on jurisprudence have convinced him that the the line between proper legal activity and legal activism is a rather fine line. This isn’t to say that the court hasn’t been acting wrongly, but he would like to see on a case by case basis what the relevant back ground and history is.
But let’s get over these broad questions. HTe case you make for judicial activism is at least prima facie persuasive and Muffti is grateful for the history. Let’s get to matters of substance:
While Muffti is sympathetic to the view that the homosexuals were striking a blow in teh cultural war, its not clear to Muffti why they don’t have this right. And deep down, all the dancing around really has been in avoidance of this qeustion: why is it that the will of residents not to let a segment of their population hold a parade should be allowed to trump the rights on a group that want to march? Of course its a fine line betweeen what is a proper outlet for free speech, what is excessive; what is dangerous and what is an abuse of police resources. But in a properly functioning, EQUABLE democracy, the tyranny of the majority and storng willed is just as bad as the suppresion of free speech on the other side. So Muffti is still wanting to know why gays don’t have the right to march and, if they do, why Haredi anger isn’t misplaced when it is aimed towards a gay parade rather than towards the courts and oligarchy you claim for israel.
Muffti likes the picture you paint fo the haredim and their rioting; but frankly, he isn’t especially convinced. The target didn’t see to be the courts that had in teh past suppressed their speech. It didn’t seme to be the police. It seemed entirely aimed at the gay parade qua gay parade. And Muffti can’t help but think that in this case no victory was won for free speech but a victory was won for showing that by kicking up enough fo a violent fuss, you can bend peopel to your will. In all honesty, the antagonizing gays and liberal elite that you lump together in the end really struck me as fairly reasonable when they agreed to compromise on the day of the parade and then on the nature of the parade.
In other words, Muffti can’t help but think that you are contextualizing the haredi riots in a way that masks the truth behind the rioting. Had their freedom of speech not been suppressed in the past but the gays ahd been granted the right to march (which Muffti to this day hasn’t seen a great reason other than it offends sensibiliities to deny that right to them – and free speech is designed to protect speech taht is offensive to some. Non-offensive speech hardly needs the protection) would you see haredim doing just what they are doing? Muffti can only guess that the answer is ‘yes’.
And you can see this by the press releases and actions fo the Haredim: their announced aim is not to move towards a more equable israel, its to stop a parade of people who commit acts they find offensive from being anywhere within teh city limit.
Muffti is perfectly willing to be convinced otherwise but he thinks that otherwise your heroic picture of the haredim is a little unconvincing. And still, while you make a persuasive case that the courts are acting against the interests of an open democracy in various cases, Muffti still hasn’t seen an answer to this set of questions:
1) Do the gays have a right to march? and if they do, oughtn’t the court to protect it?
2) If the answer to (1) is ‘yes’ or even ‘maybe’, isn’t it true that the Haredim sought to block people’s legitimate right through violent means?
In other words, if Muffti is right, teh aim has nothign to do with fixing israel and everythign to do wtih keeping things you don’t like out of your neighbourhood. And teh violence seemed entirely designed to show that if hte city was going to allow the gays to march, they were goign to have to spend a lot of resources on cops because the threat of violence was legitimate and omnipresent.
OK, muffti is rambling and repeating himslef. Let him conclude iwth one point, an point of etiquette. Muffti attributes to you very little by way of backgroudn beliefs. he does this out of respect and he’d appreciate the same respect from you. Muffti isn’t kept goign in his beliefs because he thinks the religious are stupid or uneducated. His academic discipline is an interesting one is that, while predominantly sympathetic to the left of politics and atheism, a sizeable chunk is composed of right wingers and religious christians, jews and muslims. Many of hte latter are peopel Muffti happily counts as his friends and intellectual confidants and he has no inclination to think they are the products of inbreeding, bad education or poor deductive powers. He thinks they are wrong, but not stupid and their is a difference. So honest, when you say things like…:
…you’re being a rude asshole. Please stop becuase in all other regards Muffti thinks quite highly of you and your intelligence. He has no underlying assumptions and frankly he doesn’t give a shit about who is more educated than who. As if that gave any side a right to claim that they are right anyways…
Muffti – I will also (try to!) be brief.
You write:
muffti is rambling and repeating himself.
– – – – – – – – – – – – –
Yes, indeed.
In particular:
1) I have repeatedly made it clear that I do not come to condone or “justify” the riots – merely to understand them in context.
2) I’ve also repeatedly stated that my main concern is to get a working, equable democracy up and running in Israel. Of course that includes the right of Israeli gays to march in their own city. The relevant points to me are:
a) That is not the case currently – we don’t have an equable system, and that is what caused the haredim to take their grievance to the street.
b) The rights of others were largely respected by the haredi community in previous years, and they respected a compromise that returned the parade to its natural size and scope.
So the choice to focus on the inflammatory rhetoric of some speakers (which has its parallels in the anti-religious screeds of the left) kinda ignores the actual actions of the haredi leadership.
Muffti, you wrote:
Muffti can’t help but think that you are contextualizing the haredi riots in a way that masks the truth behind the rioting.
– – – – – – – – – – – –
I have laid out the chronology quite clearly – both of the gay march, and of the court’s attacks on the speech and assembly of entire political/religious groups in Israel. Yet you keep on trying to loop back, truncate, or rejigger this chronology so that the focus is on the “theoretical” inadmissability of the haredi rioting in some “theoretically” level, stable democracy. That doesn’t currently exist.
Some examples of muffti “repeating himself” – that is, repeatedly trying to rejigger or ignore the backstory, and ignore that the starting point of our discussion INCLUDES the right of the gays to march:
Muffti can’t help but think that in this case no victory was won for free speech but a victory was won for showing that by kicking up enough fo a violent fuss, you can bend people to your will.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
… ignoring the chronology that clearly establishes that the left/liberal side upped the ante, changed the character of the parade, and used its power to bend the mayor and other people to their will.
It would be more realistic and to the point to simply say that the riots worked because a culture of force holds sway, rather than a culture of law and respect for others. And the court (and the left as a cultural force) certainly hold major responsibility for creating that atmosphere.
Further:
Muffti can’t help but think that you are contextualizing the haredi riots in a way that masks the truth behind the rioting.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – –
…. fasten seatbelts, prepare for a loop-de-loop:
Had their freedom of speech not been suppressed in the past but the gays had been granted the right to march… would you see haredim doing just what they are doing? Muffti can only guess that the answer is ‘yes’.
– – – – – – – – – – –
…. even though the parade went off for 4 years without a hitch, and even though the haredim respected the compromise this year?
The fixed star guiding you is that the haredim must be intolerant. Yet that is not how they have acted in most cases – and I have now given you the facts and the chronology. There is no need to “guess” how the haredim would act.
Have the haredim hardened their rhetoric from benign neglect to antagonism? Probably. But that is a real-world consequence of the slapdowns and in-your-face attacks that have been mounted from the left. That is how things work in the real world.
Finally, Muffti’s big rhetorical flourish turns out to be a case of crashing through already open doors:
Muffti still hasn’t seen an answer to this set of questions:
1) Do the gays have a right to march? and if they do, oughtn’t the court to protect it?
2) If the answer to (1) is ‘yes’ or even ‘maybe’, isn’t it true that the Haredim sought to block people’s legitimate right through violent means?
– – – – – – – – – – – – –
… and all the facts and backstory are forgotten as we loop back to our starting point: the ideal equable democracy in which we ALL have ALREADY agreed that the riots are not justified, and that the marchers have a right to march.
Yes, Muffti – in that ideal world, the haredim would have been wrong to riot.
But they didn’t riot in that world. Because in that world, they would not have felt disenfranchised. They would have felt confident in their own rights to speak – and to have their elected representatives conduct Jerusalem’s affairs.
Because in that world the supreme court would have been wrong to force Jews to open their shopping malls on Shabbat,
AND it would have been wrong to levy a slapdown fine on Jerusalem’s mayor
AND it would have been wrong to prevent the political right from assembling to protest the expulsion, or to shut down its radio station.
AND it would have been wrong to grab the powers given to the Chief Rabbinate and the religious courts by standing law.
…. but all these things happened. And they are most definitely the “root causes” of the rioting.
Stepping in at the end – and in this case, stepping over my exposition of the facts – and repeating the contextless condemnation of the haredim (which just HAPPENS to coincide with PC orthodoxies) – is intellectually dishonest.
It is disingenuous.
And you’ve looped right back to it.
So when you write:
Muffti isn’t kept goign in his beliefs because he thinks the religious are stupid or uneducated. His academic discipline is an interesting one is that, while predominantly sympathetic to the left of politics and atheism, a sizeable chunk is composed of right wingers and religious christians, jews and muslims….
He has no underlying assumptions…
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
1) This bla-blah would be more convincing if you weren’t looping back to the fixed stars of PC orthodoxy, even after considerable evidence has been presented to you – not all of it new to you, either, since many of these cultural skirmishes were discussed here on Jewlicious as they came up.
I believe the current locution is “Yeah, whatever.”
2) If you’ve made it through this thread still thinking I support the total suppression of the gays right to march – you most definitely have been ascribing “primitive” beliefs to me (as you did when you “guessed” that the haredim would behave intolerantly, when in fact they did not).
You most definitely do have underlying assumptions – and they are those of the left-liberal orthodoxy that permeates academia.
It’s been fun but it feels like it’s turning into a circle game and the coffee shop’s closing anyways, so, without an urge to crack open the old texts (G-d, if there were an internet when I was at the university!) I’ll just ask BD a couple last questions, (and I hope they don’t sound to “pollyana-ish”). He can answer as succinctly as he wants. All in the context of if the march actually did go down…
1) Do you support the Haredim’s right to a violent counterprotest?
2) Do you feel that it’s legitimate to use the threat of violence as a means to sway the government’s (police, courts, councillars) decision in allowing or disallowing the march.
On other issues, I think we know where we stand and can all go home for the night.
I’m curious – were the Haredim banned from peacefully protesting the march? Or the rally? The news over here has been horribly underreported. Coffee’s getting cold…
Oh B-D. Muffti doesn’t think you are primitive. Muffti thinks you are at times obfuscating and confusing. That’s different than primitive and you know it. If you want to read into this that Muffti thinks tat you are primitive, unintelligent or uneducated, Muffti will cease trying to convince you otherwise because you clearly are trying to foist on Muffti whatever you can.
Anyhow…Muffti didn’t think that you wanted the total supression of gays to march. He understand what you DO want: you want an equable system where people aren’t disenfranchised and freedom of speech isn’t suppressed by courts that act in such a way to make law rather than interpret and apply it.
And Muffti realizes that one can understand the rioting in the relevant context. He still doesn’t think, even in these circumstances, that the rioting was justified and he’d be more convinced of your contextualization if the rioters had directed their anger towards the courts rather than the parade itself. Let Muffti be a little clearer: you are painting the rioters as politically motivated folks trying to accomplish change in the ‘banana’ republic. But for all intent and purposes, it looked like they were just trying to stop a parade. Has there been any increase in their freedom of speech as a result of rioting? Has there been any change in court policy towards the Haredim as a result of rioting? Was that ever the aim of the rioters in teh first place?
Muffti keeps asking and keeps not getting an answer to the question. All he gets is you calling him an elite-liberarl-leftist-academic-whatever-word-you-try-to-use-in-a-dirty-way who isnt taking context into effect. What Muffti is asking is that you justify the theory you give as the clear cause of the rioting. A chronology is NOT the same as a causal chain and you know that precisely because you are ‘primitive’.
As an example, Muffti can’t help but recall a plan to mock the parade by parading animals down the street where the clear intent was to compare gays to beasts. THat’s all fine and well and Muffti supports their right to do so – but he doesn’t see how any of that anger and creativity is being used to increase freedom of speech and equable relations in Israel. It was used to stop a parade. Kudos to them for respecting a compromise. But Muffti still regrets the fat that, ven contextualized and even with extend our sympathy to a group that has been neglected and unlstened to, teh compromise was achieved through violence.
To be totlaly honest, Muffti has actually lost track of exactly waht we are arguing about. You and Muffti agree that the gays have a right to march. We agree that violence in a fair and equable society is not condonable and we agree that Israel is inequitable in this way. So if we are disagreeing about anything it is wehther or not int his case (a) the Haredim were justified in their rioting (Muffti says ‘no’, you say ‘yes’) and (b) is it obvious that the disenfranchising you suggest was the cause of hte riot. You say ‘yes’ Muffti says ‘not obviously’.
We aren’t disagreeing over history or context. We;re disagreeing over hwat is justified and what is caused. So, thank you for the history lesson as it was instructive but your point is yet to be established.
OK – addressing the point you don’t think I’ve answered until now:
(Muffti would) be more convinced of your contextualization if the rioters had directed their anger towards the courts rather than the parade itself. Let Muffti be a little clearer: you are painting the rioters as politically motivated folks trying to accomplish change in the ‘banana’ republic. But for all intent and purposes, it looked like they were just trying to stop a parade. Has there been any increase in their freedom of speech as a result of rioting? Has there been any change in court policy towards the Haredim as a result of rioting? Was that ever the aim of the rioters in teh first place?
– – – – – – – – – – – – – –
1) The haredim successfully protected their communities from an assault on their sense of decency. And they served very dramatic notice to the police and courts that there are limits to what can be imposed upon them – while simultaneously showing that they honor deals.
So they have already – and will in the future – get different, better treatment from the courts and the police because of this push-back.
(Again: we all agree that a healthy society shouldn’t operate at this lowest common denominator.)
2) I have no doubt that many people who have suffered under the Court’s unequal treatment do not share the understanding of how democracies should work that comes naturally to us. I’ve had some hair-raising discussions with people across the spectrum of Israeli opinion who betray a total lack of knowledge – and commitment – to the open, democratic society we agree is our goal. In particular, the conversations lauding a “strong leader” – voiced in turn by supporters of Rabin, then Sharon, and now Liberman – keep me up at night.
So I’m quite sure the Israeli haredim may not give the same weight as I have to the various motives behind their riots.
3) It’s also quite natural that the street-level focus was on the more emotive issues, rather than the somewhat dryer discussion of the country’s legal structure. This is similar to the way in which discussions about, say, liberalizing Israel’s economy play out in “marches of the unemployed” and other emotional pitches and emotive slogans. That is the nature of political speech in the era of television and PR spin.
B-D, Muffti is suprised about how much you and Muffti agree! If Muffti reads you correctly, we both agree that while the rioters have been mistreated and one can sympathize with this mistreatment, the actual rioting itself had as a local cause a particular issue: gays marching around offending their sense of decency. Muffti’s claim, from the start, was that threats of violence making police inability to protect the parade was akin to terrorism: you make a situation so uncomfortable for a group and so dangerous that the police tell the group they simply aren’t able to protect them, which seemed to be the implicit AND EXPLICIT IN SOME CASES motives of the Haredi marchers. Muffti thought that that was wrong and unjustified, even given the context in which you so aptly situated them.
what did we disagree about? (1) You don’t have a right in even a perfectly well functioning society to have your sensibilities not offended. You DO have a right not to go to parades and people do’t have a right to come onto your private property. But public property is for public use.
Now we grant that Israel is not a perfect democracy by any means. And thus if Haredim were protesting regularly against an unfair system that has mistreated them, Muffti would have far more sympathy even if the protest turned violent. But as you say in (2) and (3) this isn’t clearly the case. you have particular interests and motives and Muffti thinks that all in all they seem fairly noble. But you can’t justify someone else’s actions by reference to YOUR motives. C’est la vie – Muffti thinks that one is justified in killing someone else if their life is realistically threatened by that person. It doesn’t follow that someone who kills someone else threatenign them has self defense as a motive – some may simply enjoy killing people and didn’t even realize that their life was under threat. I woudn’t try to understand and justify the guy by reference to self defense.
Muffti was arguing that though you do a nice job of contextualizing the Haredi response, we both agree that it is no easy task to tie the chronology to the actual events and motives of the people on the street. And Muffti can’t help but think that his original point stands: if you go rioting with the explicit idea that you can force the police to cancel a parade because of threats of violence, you disrupt the proper workings of a democracy that for better or worse protects the rights of gays to march. The fact htat you can contextualize things in a way that makes the rioters looks better doesn’t seem to help with this charge if that isnt’ even the operative motives in the minds of your rioters. Or so Muffti thinks.
So take that, ya fuckin’ primitive! (Muffti keeds!)
Muffti loops the loop again:
Muffti can’t help but think that his original point stands: if you go rioting with the explicit idea that you can force the police to cancel a parade because of threats of violence, you disrupt the proper workings of a democracy that for better or worse protects the rights of gays to march.
– – – – – – – – – – – – –
… which betrays your own agenda: your focus is the “rights of gays to march” – no matter how it is achieved – rather than the general inequity that leads to rioting and other bad things.
The very formulation of your words betrays the notion that gays (and other groups on the Left’s victimology A-list) are a protected class of sorts, entitled to more rights that others – or to impose themselves upon their lesser brethren on the petit-bourgeois, Judeo-Christian “B-list”.
The secular Left raised the ante in this case, turning the march into an imposition and an insult.
The secular Left consistently suspended the rights of those opposed to its agenda – creating the environment of rule-by-force that now holds sway.
The haredim were smart and strong enough to play the cards left them in the bullying, doctrinaire environment created by the Left.
The only way to ignore all this “contextualization” and loop back to condemnation of the haredim is if the starting point is the built-in slant of victimology/class politics. It’s increasingly clear that Muffti’s starting assumptions are not those of a truly equable democracy: the starting point is that the gay parade is somehow a speech above others – in particular, above the speech of the right, and especially the religious right.
None of the backstory matters, none of it has changed your opinion, because even the gaudiest, bawdiest, parade – involving legions of non-Israelis – would still be a “more protected” speech than others, trumping the rights of Jerusalem’s populace.
Not because of any hifalutin notions of democracy or citizen’s rights – but because they’re on the ideological A-list.
And because you – like the Israeli Supremes and other left/liberal folks – don’t reallly care how your agenda is imposed. You crank up the fine words only when it is convenient for you.
Muffti, you complain repeatedly about my “contextualization”. But the context is what allows us to see clearly who really is weakening Israeli democracy. And you are determined to avoid this – which is understandable, since the reality context casts your cultural heroes/fellow travelers in a not very flattering light.
Understandable – but ingenuous.
And from the perspective of someone who DOES want Israel to move forward to democracy, and whose political camp HAS demonstrated its willingness to abide by public referenda and the strictures of democracy – not very noble, either.
For all the fluffy talk about rights, it’s the same Orwellian scheme in which some people are still more equal than others.
… and it’s especially galling when you harp repeatedly on the supposed lack of “purity” in the haredi riot. You repeatedly hammer on the idea that “if only the haredim were protesting inequities in the system before”.
As if such a march would be allowed! As if dissenting speech were allowed to take place last year, and in previous situations.
That’s the point isn’t it – the point in the “context” that you are straining to avoid:
– when the permitted venues of dissent are stopped up and silenced, you get riots.
– when the ruling elite shows that is is willing to rule by force, and only respects force – you get threats of force.
B-d said
The formulation of muffti’s words did no such thing. It’s not a special right and it has nothing to do with victimology. Certainly Muffti thinks that the right to have parades and march and represent yourself is not limited to groups that have been discriminated against. And Muffti doesn’t think that hte right is ‘acheived’ by any means possible; a right is a right. It’s not to be achieved, it’s to be respected or not respected.
Muffti thinks that perhaps you’re the one who thinks his intellectual opponent is a primitive.
And you can go along all you like aobut how Muffti doesn’t care about democracy, equality. He does. And he cares about hte right of the orthodox to free speech. And to protect the values of their community.
But what he sees here is a conflict of rights = the right to march of one group versus the right of another group. Muffti does NOT approve (whatever you say ove rnad over again) of squelching the right to free speech by the orthodox. But he doesn’t think that the right of the orthodox to oppose the march ENTAILS the right to prevent the gays from marching.
Muffti, by the way, was NOT complaining about the contextualization: he actually found it extremely helpful. He was complaining that there was a connection that was still to be made – the connection between the squelching of haredi rights in the past and the current haredi riots. And you yourself said that what was motivating the rioters didn’t square very perfectly with the causes you would like to see the haredi riots achieving.
Asking for justification of identifying a context iwth a cause is NOT the same thing as ignoring a context. Muffti has no idea why you keep conflating those two things but he wishes you would stop. If the neo-nazis wanted to march in Jerusalem, Muffti would support their right to march as well – and whateve else you think, those dudes are NOT on any A-, B- or even C- list as far as favoured groups by teh left go. And if hte Haredim wanted to march with banners that said that homosexuals, shrimp eaters and the like were abominations who should be cut off from teh community, Muffti would support their right as well.
THe problem with you is that you see Muffti focus on an issue and assume that he has an agenda in mind: protect the favoured victimized group. Muffti prefers to think of it as taking a stand on who has a better claim to the right to free speech in a particular instance and in this case, Muffti thinks its the gays. You can attribute motive after agenda after ideology to him if you like but Muffti still hasn’t seen a convincing argument that the right of the haredim to free speech entails the lack of rights of the gays to hold the parade tat they wanted. Or anyone else for that matter,whether the world symapathizes or has antipathy towards them.
No doubt in your head as you read theis you are hearing ‘blah blah high falutin’ blah’ and Muffti doesn’t know how to stop you from doing that. He just wishes that once in a while you would back off from your pidgeonholing your opponents and answer the question, which Muffti will pose one last time:
Given that we agree tha thte haredim’s rights to speech have been ignored and trampelled on in the past even on this issue, and given that we agree that the gays have an abstract right to march (as does just about any group supporting a political message) and given that hte Haredim are rioting about a gay parade and not, as you would prefer but admit isn’t true, rioting about the lack of free speech and the furthering of democracy, GIVEN ALL THAT, why do you think that the haredim’s rioting is anything but their attempt to force a group to submit to their will by violence? Muffti would be much happier to see them take to the streets and even riot with explicit aim of protesting the squelching of their freedom of speech. THat would be something Muffti would applaud along with you.
Muffti – I saw the light still on in the coffee shop and well, I need a cuppa joe. I asked BD more or less the same question and he pretends like I’m not even here, which makes me feel kinda sad but he listens to you whatever it takes to get him to address the question.
But I really want to stress defend that I do have a political agenda in general but it’s irrelevant here. For example, as much as I would’ve loved to swung a bat with him, Irv Rubin trying to sway Illinois law enforcement with tacit threats of violence in Skokie was wrong. Just as these ridiculous members of what BD calls the “liberal-left orthodoxy” are huge assholes…
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/006053.htm
… (used this link because it has video). Little shits need to be slapped. This isn’t the only instance where a gay pride march was halted due to threats of violence. In Riga the march was allowed and it turned violent… in Moscow it was banned but went on anyways and ended with state-supported violence against the protesters.
Muffti, would you really support the Haredim rioting for a right to free speech? Have their human rights been trampled upon enough to warrant a riot? I guess where one draws the line between justifiable and unjustifiable use of violence to defend their rights is a personal choice. Anyways, I know Israel’s not Europe, but here’s a few tidbits from the European Convention On Human Rights. (What a thing, this internet!!):
“Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and to freedom of association with others, including the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.”
“Freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs shall be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of public safety, for the protection of public order, health or morals, or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”
“No restrictions shall be placed on the exercise of these rights other than such as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others. this article shall not prevent the imposition of lawful restrictions on the exercise of these rights by members of the armed forces, of the police or of the administration of the State.”
Maybe it is time for a little more internal violence in Israel. Like Clemenza said in “The Godfather” it “helps to get rid of the bad blood.” Every time someone’s rights have been trampled on and they go out and riot or pull guns on the opposition. But to me that just seems so… Gaza Strip.
1. The “purity of motive” argument:
Muffti wrote:
If the neo-nazis wanted to march in Jerusalem, Muffti would support their right to march as well
– – – – – – – – – –
… and we know that they were (correctly) allowed to march in Skokie.
Further:
And if the Haredim wanted to march with banners that said that homosexuals, shrimp eaters and the like were abominations who should be cut off from teh community, Muffti would support their right as well.
– – – – – – – – – – – –
Really?
What about when you write:
why do you think that the haredim’s rioting is anything but their attempt to force a group to submit to their will by violence? Muffti would be much happier to see them take to the streets and even riot with explicit aim of protesting the squelching of their freedom of speech. THat would be something Muffti would applaud along with you.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Guess what, Muffti – the Nazis don’t support democracy – like certain other groups, they were using the Western notion of universal suffrage and rights to promote the subversion of those rights. They were/are DEFINITELY about “attempting to force a group to submit to their will by violence” – as you describe the haredim.
Yet they are free to march, and we’re all agreed that the proper response is to answer their speech with other speech, not to censor their message.
So… the haredim don’t have to agree with you. Or with the democracy that lets them march. They can be as, uhhhh, “transgressive” as the gay marchers. They can march in favor of theocracy, if they wish.
(The reality is that they rioted only in reaction to slap-down politicization of this specific issue, and an enormously provocative stretching of the idea of “free assembly” by the gays, compared with marches in previous years. And they accepted a compromise that let the gays assemble and speak.)
My previous comments on the motivations for the haredi riots were not “admissions” of impure motive, but descriptions of how things work in reality – in particular:
-certain events and personalities become lightning rods for long-stewing greivances.
-people exposed only to heavy-handed oligarchy internalize those values, and their initial reactions to such oppression is in the coin of the realm – shows of force and domination.
So?
I’m certainly working to articulate Western notions and expectations here in Israel, and hope they take hold.
But in the meantime the haredim can espouse any ideas they want – Skokie teaches us that there is no test of ideological purity or allegiance to democratic principle that people must pass before they are free to speak.
Discussing the motivation of haredim relates directly to the next point:
2. Context vs. Causation:
Muffti writes:
Asking for justification of identifying a context iwth a cause is NOT the same thing as ignoring a context. Muffti has no idea why you keep conflating those two things but he wishes you would stop. If the neo-nazis wanted to march in Jerusalem, Muffti would support their right to march as well.
– – – – – – – – – – – –
… well, let’s go back to Skokie for a minute, OK?
Imagine that after the Supreme Court ruled that the Nazis could march, they then levied punitive personal fines against the Jew-mayor of Skokie and the Jewish communal leaders who brought the appeal.
With the full support of the media (“we won’t let those Jews tell us how to run things – this is America!” Fawning profiles of the justices who “put that mayor in his place”, sympathetic interviews of the white supremacists, etc. – with Jews being ridiculed in, or excluded from, mass media outlets).
Imagine that the Nazi party, reading the Court’s signals correctly, organized a massive, vulgar parade for the following year – bringing in skinheads and white supremacists from around the world, and planning vulgar and provocative displays.
The Jews riot.
Any problems with causation here?
Yet this is the backstory for the rioting in Jerusalem.
If you’re having difficulty, you can translate the scenario to the more antisemitic arenas of Europe – or to blacks in the civil-rights-era south.
3. Agenda-Driven Thinking:
Muffti writes:
THe problem with you is that you see Muffti focus on an issue and assume that he has an agenda in mind: protect the favoured victimized group. Muffti prefers to think of it as taking a stand on who has a better claim to the right to free speech in a particular instance and in this case, Muffti thinks its the gays.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Why is there a dichotomoy here?
In previous years, there were groups of Israeli gays and Israelis opposed to the gay agenda, holding signs across the street from each other. Just as protests and counter-protests take place all the time.
So why didn’t it happen that way this year?
Did the haredim suddenly get a bee in their collective bonnet this year, unprovoked?
No, they didn’t.
Cutting out the backstory of left/liberal politicization of the parade allows you to arrive once again at an abstract plane in which two seemingly identical “rights to march” are weighed.
And to ignore the reality in which haredi rights to speech are much more in jeopardy, much more selectively allowed!
You write:
Given that we agree that the haredim’s rights to speech have been ignored and trampelled on in the past even on this issue, and given that we agree that the gays have an abstract right to march (as does just about any group supporting a political message) and given that hte Haredim are rioting about a gay parade and not, as you would prefer but admit isn’t true, rioting about the lack of free speech and the furthering of democracy, GIVEN ALL THAT, why do you think that the haredim’s rioting is anything but their attempt to force a group to submit to their will by violence?
– – – – – – – – – – – – – –
… here it all is in a nutshell.
See how you gallop past serious infractions of democratic freedom to get to the agenda driven conclusion?
“Yes, yes, alright, I’ll admit in passing that the haredim have had their rights of speech, asembly, and represention suspended – but I’m not going to let that reality change my definition of who the people being wronged are! And I’m certainly not going to breathe a word about the left/liberal side’s responsibility for both the situation and the tenor of public discourse in Israel!”
That is agenda-driven thinking. All mention of the backstory that would nuance the discussion – indicating that the gay marcher’s claim is less than innocent, and not pressed in innocence before an impartial tribunal, that there is some justification for the haredim taking their grievance to the street – all of this is omitted.
To make the reality fit the ideological predefinition of who is virtuous, who’s “speech is preferrable” – as you quite tellingly cast it, creating a dichotomy where none should exist.
Sorry RM and BD…Muffti has been in Toronto for a wedding. Will be back home c’est soir and will be happy to take a closer look at what you guys had to say.
OK, Muffti is back and in fightin’ form. Or so he hopes.
B-D, Muffti thinks you misunderstood him (thouhg it’s probably Muffti’s fault, not yours). He doesn’t think that the right to free speech is only yours if you march for democracy. You can march for anything you like; Muffti had in mind the following: you seemed to be painting the haredim in the following light – a bunch of peopel sick of being put down by a systemt hat was not properly respecting their right to free speech. Muffti was claimin that that was a nice way to contexualize things but wanted you to square it with the ‘facts on teh ground’.
The haredim, like the Nazis, can march for whatever they see fit. But Muffti won’t sit around giving it moral support anymore than he’d lend his moral support to the nazis.
Muffti isn’t sure why you keep insisting that he is ignoring the backstory – he appreciatest he back story and was askign for a direct connection. Which you gestured at in the ‘context vs. causation’ section. That’s not ignoring stuff; that’s asking for a justification.
There’s a lurking issue in the background – the demonization of the gays for wanting to have a parade the size they are planning. Muffti finds it hard to adjudicate these issues – could you say a bit more about why you think that the gay parade was somehow ‘too large’ and unacceptable? This isn’t a matter of whose speech is preferrable.
There is a culture war out there as you say; and as you say, correctly the hardeim if they feel like it can march for full theocracy. And if they want to push for teh largest parade they can get their hands on, well, so be it. And if the rest of israel finds it provocative and complains, so be it. And if haredim had been treated as a special group and the rest of israel, for trying to prevent them from marching, had had their mayor(s) slapped with a fine, so be it as well. Muffti would still support the haredi right to march, and think it wrong of the rest of israelis to try to intimidate the haredim throgh violence, even with all the backstory in place.
See, the arguemnt between us has nothign to do wtih ignoring backstories, or trrying to ignore the follies and mean intentions of the left. It’s a matter of two theories:
Theory 1) The haredim are sick of beign put down and havign their freedom of speech denied, their mayor fined, their demonstrations violently broken up. They riot out of sheer frustration at the opportunity provided by a provocative gay pride parade.
Theory 2) the police announce that, as a result of stabbing in former years and haredi unrest, that the riot can be cancelled if the police can’t manage to provide for safety. The Haredi, seeing an opportunity, provide a plethora of evidence that they have no intention of lettign things go on peacefully. THis gives the police a great deal of evidence that they won’t be able to keep the marchers safe. As Muffti said, this is just terrorism – trying to provide enough mayhem and chaos to the point where people simply give up and run.
We agree on teh backstory. Muffti has been arguing that theory 2 as to haredi motivations is plain out sinister, wrong, and not clearly false of the intentional struture behind the rioting. And it seems to have worked. You prefere theory 1 naturally, thogh we both admit that motives are pretty hard to read off the facts on the street.
Would you at leat to admit that if theory (2) is right, that the haredis are in the wrong? and that it is just plain terror?
RM, muffti doesn’t know when rioting is justified and when it isn’t. It’s a good qeustion. But he at least can understand rioting for more access to speech and your rights as a noble motive for it.
For someone who repeatedly pointed out the irrelevance of comparing this situation to Skokie, BD seems to be doing it quite a bit. I can’t argue anyone’s right to equivocate a massive display of white supremacism, racial hatred and preaching of violence against all non-aryans with a massive display of gayness. No matter how much buggery one claims goes on at these gay pride marches, parades, etc. But playing the equivocation game is a slippery slope (although a lot of fun). What if Ethiopian Jews rioted against racism and the restriction of their religious freedom by the Rabbinate? What if the Haredim wanted to march through the Castro holding signs that read “God hates gays” and the mayor of S.F. says he/she/it has to call off the march because the safety of the Haredim can’t be insured (gays can riot with the best of ’em). What if Lindberg was elected President of the U.S. and we didn’t get into WWII and Walter Winchell organized… wait, that’s absurd. And irrelevant.
All the more reason to play some more. The Rodney King assault followed by the obviously farcical acquitals of the cops involved followed by African-American and Hispanic community’s “response” – four innocents dead the brutal Reginald Denny assault, a community destroying itself out of anger and frustration at a racist and unfair system. A billion in damages. But the backstory legitimizes it. Years of poverty and rights being ignored by the government. The anger and the response is justified. Does it justify the response? To illustrate how, to, the threat of violence can make yourself heard, a years later, with the riots still fresh in everyone minds, O.J. Simpson’s acquited of killing two white people in a farcial jury trial.
Trust me, LA breathed one huge collective sigh of relief. But let’s just say for argument that the Haredim’s free speech has been suspended by the very government that’s supposed to protect it. Their religious, moral and ethical sensibilities are being trampled on and no one seems to care. They’re the victims and their anger is justified. Do we tacitly allow them to chose the method of their response? Has democracy been suspended enough for even the threat of violence be considered legitimate civil disobedience? Well, the Haredim chose violence. Proven effective over time, great way to get your voice heard, just make sure the women are around to clean up the mess…
The Warsaw Uprising was noble. That was about the right to live. The American revolution was noble. That was about oh, every right the Haredim claims they’ve lost and a thousand more. The Nat Turner Rebellion was about freedom from slavery. Fairly noble, if not brutal.
What sets rebellions and revolutions apart from rioting is exactly about nobility. Against a well-defined, immoral, totalitarian and physically subjucating power ruling out of the boundries of freedom and justice. If the backstory of the Haredim compares to that, they deserve the option of rebellion. I’m surprised the porn community didn’t riot every time someone steps on their rights of free speech. Or the Screenwriters’ Guild when the Hays laws went into effect.
But Muffti, it’s probably true that when assessing the nobility of violence in the name of freedom it’s best done in hindsight. Today everyone’s cause is noble and worth knifing for. And Toronto rocks. 🙂
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