WATCH: ‘The Happiest Man In America’ is a Chinese American Jew Who Lives in Hawaii

Alvin Wongbaum. Just kidding. It’s just Wong. Alvin Wong.

Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish American political scientist and author, specializing in Jewish-related issues and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was invited to give a speech at the University of Waterloo in which a Jewish girl threw the Holocaust card to silence criticisms of the Israeli government’s crimes against the Palestinian people. 

And here is what Dr. Finkelstein had to say in response.

[via:bradicalmang]

‘History Marches On; Nativism Marches in Place’ / Ampersand by Barry Deutsch

History never seems to be on Conservatives’ side. Oh that’s right, because they are consistently wrong about everything.

Elena Kagan, after being asked by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), where she was during the attempted airline bombing on Christmas Day (via savingpaper)

THE BEST THING I HAVE HEARD ALL DAY!

Bold, provocative, and perhaps effective?

The “Jewish Boat to Gaza” will sail next month from an undisclosed location carrying passengers from the United States, Germany and Britain. At least one passenger is reported to be a Holocaust survivor.

American Jews for a Just Peace announced last week that it will serve as the U.S. coordinator for the Jewish boat. The other groups participating in the flotilla include “Judische Stimme” (”Jewish Voice” for a Just Peace in the Near East) and Jews for Justice for Palestinians, a British organization.

More here.

Peter Beinart, The Failure of the American Jewish Establishment

Beinart makes a fascinating retooling of Zionism in this article which, in his mind, should be a force to “save liberal democracy in the only Jewish state on earth.” But such a movement could never co-opt the Zionist tag without its historic baggage of right wing oppression and massacre. Whatever the name, Beinart clearly understands that even as the Netanyahu government pushes Israel toward an apartheid state, Israel must resist, reverse course, and “memorialize the history of Jewish suffering is through the ethical use of Jewish power.” So far, not so good.

Kai Bird, the Jerusalem-raised, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, has a great hope laced with a hint of skepticism. He writes:

I would like to think that before this century is over, Israel will become a republic with a constitution that guarantees fully equal rights for both its Hebrew-speaking and its Arabic-speaking citizens. Perhaps someday Israel’s language rather than its religion will define its national identity. Israel can gradually shed its theocratic aspects and erect a twenty-first-century “iron wall” between synagogue and state. A constitution will strip the rabbinical courts of any political powers or privileges. The physical wall that today divides Israelis from Palestinians living in the West Bank will be torn down.

Bird wishes for a truly secular Israel that has shucked off the sentiments of messianic Zionism and abandoned the notion that it is a “Jewish state” and has embraced instead a “Hebrew-speaking secular state which Jewish culture and religion are merely components of Israel’s national identity.” However, Bird isn’t blind to the roughly 1.5 million ultra-Orthodox and national religious Israelis whose political clout has trumped the majority of culturally secular Israelis and empowered the Netanyahu government to support the settlers’ movement that undermines further diplomatic negotiations with the Palestinian Authority to come to a “two state” solution. But fixing the diplomacy would be meaningless without an ideological shift. His prescription?

The Israelis and Palestinians need to see each other and acknowledge each other’s historical narrative. The Palestinians need to acknowledge the Shoah [the Holocaust] and come to understand that their adversary is heavily burdened by a history of victimhood. Likewise, Jewish Israelis need to accept the Nakba [the “Catastrophe”, the creation of Israel out of historic Palestine] as a core part of the Israeli-Palestinian experience.

And though Bird concedes, “We’re not there yet. We’re not even close”—maybe, just maybe, by the end of the century.

Read Kai Bird’s insightful essay in full here at The Nation.

(Above, Kai Bird. His most recent book is his memoir, Crossing Mandelbaum Gate: Coming of Age Between the Arabs and Israelis, 1956-1978 from which his essay was adapted)

The homoerotic homosociality of Jesus and his disciples has never been lost to gay artists and queer theorists, but Australian artist Ross Watson’s recent painting Untitled 01-10 which depicts gay porn star François Sagat about to be crucified is quintessential great queer art—being a technically achieved aesthetic work, homoerotic, and politically, socially, and culturally defiant.

Ross Watson says of the painting:

I was motivated by the Vatican’s position on homosexuality, and its ban on condom use, to create a painting which references Caravaggio’s Crucifixion of St. Peter, and features French gay porn icon, François Sagat.

François Sagat continues to play a valuable role in the area of HIV/AIDS prevention and education. I wanted to acknowledge that in the painting, whilst tying it to the Vatican. In contrast, the Vatican uses its status in the UN General Assembly to obstruct the promotion of condoms as protection against HIV/AIDS, and sexuality education in school curricular.

Some will regard the painting as provocative, but I don’t believe it is in contrast to the Vatican’s position on these issues. The Pope’s 2nd in charge recently claimed homosexuality and pedophelia are linked. That enraged me. It seems just and deserving to depict François Sagat as a contemporary saint, given he is helping to save lives, rather than contributing to causing illness and deaths for millions.

The great majority of Caravaggio’s patrons were from the Catholic church, and his paintings were sometimes rejected as they were viewed as inappropriate for a religious theme. I’m reminded here of my freedom as an artist. Imagine what Caravaggio might paint if he were alive today?”

Using a gay porn star as a “contemporary saint” is a powerful counter-narrative to the Catholic Church’s homophobic ideology, and turns gay culture’s idolizing of porn performers into an ironically divine act. Moreover, the fact that Sagat is of Arab descent is also a corrective to mainstream depictions of Jesus as white/Anglo-Saxon. Jesus, being a Hebrew, was thus a Semite, and ancient Semitic peoples, historically-speaking, includes Arabs [thus the odd notion that modern Asiatic/Arabian Peninsula Arabs who carry prejudices against Israelis, particularly Mizrahi Jews, are “anti-Semitic” when both likely have Semitic ancestors], and thus Sagat could very well look more akin to historic Jesus than anything hanging on the cathedral walls in The Vatican.

Watson’s Untitled 01-10 is thus more than just a beautiful painting, but also a site of cultural and ideological resistance that disrupts common assumptions (racial and ethnic ones) of the crucifixion and makes explicit the homoerotic undertones of Jesus’ first fellowship.

(via Towleroad)

China’s Ancient Jewish Enclave by Matthew Fishbane for The New York Times follows his excursion to Kaifeng, China to discover a bit about the Jews and their descendants who have lived and prospered in that region for at least 700 years.

On Friday evening, after buying some bread from a Muslim street stand, Ms. Guo took Mr. Audan and me into a half-completed shopping center. She marched purposefully around several corners, past closed shops, to a second-floor balcony of empty stores. Smoggy daylight was waning, but through a curtain in one of the shops came the distinct yellow glow of candles. An Israeli flag was just visible through the glass door. And inside, around a simple gray table, sat a dozen people bowed before ritual books in both Chinese and Hebrew, about to begin their Sabbath prayers. The men wore yarmulkes. The women were perched under a poster of the 10 Commandments, written in Chinese script, hung below photos of their ancestors.

Then the group, most of whom requested anonymity, took turns reading from Hebrew prayer books.

Above photo: a mezuza in the doorway of Guo Yan’s house.