That the group which oppressed your family is valorised in popular culture and your group is presented only as a threat. That even cultural works which are not Zionist become used to elicit support for Israel and Zionism. 2/
Post-1948, Israel did have a significant role in US popular culture, from Exodus to Milk and Honey to the end of Schindlers List in Jerusalem. Salaita is being honest and acknowledging the prejudices of his family. He is simply saying that they are an understandable response to their situation. 3/
Nobody is saying that Fiddler on the Roof is intrinsically Zionist (though it did star Topol, an Israeli who was a Mossad agent), I enjoy it too. If we write off this honest and personal account as being simply antisemitism, we ignore the powerful account of US anti-Arab racism it contains. 4/
The point is to take on antisemitism, anti-Arab racism and imperialism (including Zionism) at the same time. Only a total anti-racism can set us free. END
Joseph Finlay
Joseph Finlay
Joseph Finlay
Joseph Finlay
Joseph Finlay
Of course I don’t think all Jewish culture is Zionist. Have you read anything I’ve ever written? But post-WW2 American-Jewish popular culture? It’s heavily Zionist-leaning. See Leon Uris’ Exodus or Jerry Herman’s Milk and Honey. That’s what I understand Salaita to be referencing.
It seems that a lot of being believe that Fiddler on the Roof = Judaism. We’ll have to add Fiddler hatred to the IHRA definition.
Many disagreed with the Steven Salaita essay I shared yesterday. I still think it’s valuable. I read it as a window into growing up Palestinian-American in the US, of seeing many cultural products that sympathise with Jewish characters and only unsympathetic portrayals of Arab characters. 1/
Steven Pollard accused Zack Polanski of wanting a ‘Jew register’. Pollard used to be editor of the Jewish Chronicle, which maintains a subscriber list. The size of that list, which is presumably largely Jewish, rapidly declined during his tenure due to his terrible journalism, but still…
Israel will hold elections later this year. Netanyahu thinks that he will do better if the war is still continuing at the point, rather than having ended with the Iranian regime still in place. I think that’s why the war seems to be restarting.
