Wednesday, March 02, 2011

"As an individual who is proud to be Jewish"

"As an individual who is proud to be Jewish" are the words of Natalie Portman in response to Dior's former John Galliano anti-Semitic rantings.

I am also proud to be Jewish but in another way.  It seems there has been an outburst of anti-Semitic statements recently and they do not surprise me.

Yesterday, there was Wikileaks' Assange on a Jewish conspiracy.

Then, again yesterday, we had this conspiracy from Yemen:

Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, blamed Israel for planning and funding protests in several Arab states.  "There is an operations rooms in Tel Aviv with the aim of destabilizing the Arab world," Saleh reportedly said Tuesday during a speech at Sanaa University, adding that the operations room is "run by the White House...The wave of political unrest sweeping across the Arab world is a conspiracy that serves Israel and the Zionists," he also said.

Charlie Sheen went "borderline anti-Semitic":

Charlie Sheen said he regrets making comments about Two and a Half Men co-creator Chuck Lorre that the Anti-Defamation League called "at best bizarre, and at worst, borderline anti-Semitism."  "By invoking television producer Chuck Lorre’s Jewish name in the context of an angry tirade against him, Charlie Sheen left the impression that another reason for his dislike of Mr. Lorre is his Jewishness," said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter.

And there's the portrayal of Egypt's Mubarak with anti-Semitic characteristics and the 'Jew, Jew' taunts at non-Jewish Lara Logan who was was stripped, punched, pinched and slapped in Tahrir Square.

So much power we are presumed to possess.  So much fear we instill.

Sometimes, though, I get a bit thoughtful about being 'so proud to be Jewish' and wonder what I should be thinking about non-Jews.

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UPDATE


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2 comments:

B said...

Funnily enough.. it looks like Chuck Lorre is more likely an anti-Semite than Charlie.

Chuck Lorre is the one who said: “Which raises the question, why have I spent a lifetime moving away from that group [Jews]? How did Chaim become Chuck? How did Levine become Lorre? The only answer I come up with is this: When I was a little boy in Hebrew school the rabbis regularly told us that we were the chosen people. That we were God’s favorites. Which is all well and good except that I went home, observed my family and, despite my tender age, thought to myself, ‘bull$#*!.’”

Source: http://insidetv.ew.com/2011/02/25/charlie-sheen-chaim-levine-comes-from/

Juniper in the Desert said...

Re what B said; poor Chaim Lorre, he is not a self-hating Jew but a hater of OTHER Jews! Why did he chose a Jewish name, Lorre, like Peter Lorre, of the Maltese Falcon? Why not Douglas, like Kirk or Curtis like Tony?
Will these mysteries be solved in our lifetime??