Judaism and Religion

Gershom Gorenberg

The recording of Max Blumenthal’s combat journalism in the pubs of Jerusalem has been making the virtual rounds, stirring vast debate: Has Max proven that Israelis are racists, or that American Jews are? That Israel should raise its drinking age from 18? Or what, exactly?

Well, yes, he did prove that some drunken English-speakers in Jerusalem bars are quite drunk, and quite racist, especially when the booze and perhaps the distance from politically correct campuses in America loosens their tongues.

Sadly, he also did what looks like some very sloppy journalism. Originally he explained that he and a friend had set out to “interview young Israelis and American Jews” and described those who actually appear in his clip as “beer sodden twenty-somethings, many from the United States.” Listening to the accents, I lean to believing that the “many” should be “most” if not “nearly all.” If  Max had been familiar even with the narrow journalistic territory of young Americans visiting Israel, he would know that the fact that “some told me they were planning to move to Israel in the near future” should be taken with several kilos of salt. Kids say that when they’re here. They like to think it’s true. Then they go home.

In a second post, explaining himself, Max explained that he’d been in Israel for a month. He describes his interviewees as “the college-educated sons and daughters of middle and upper class American Jews,” and then slides into describing the racism among Israelis he has found during his month in Israel. Well, OK, those are two good topics. I’m disgusted by racism when found among  American Jews, and likewise by racism among Israeli Jews. But if you want to find the racists in the latter group, interview Israelis. And if you interview Americans, write an intro about American Jewry. As currently framed, the story is best read as an argument for the old media, in which gravelly voiced editors checked young pups’ work before it went on the air or on dead trees.

That said, more professional journalists have gathered the evidence of racism – as ideology, not drunken outbursts – and done a better job of giving context.

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Gershom Gorenberg

Zevulun Orlev, I used to think, was the last nearly respectable man in the National Religious Party, or as it’s now renamed, Habayit Hayehudi. Like the rest of the party, he defended permanent Israeli rule over the Whole Land of Israel, without seeming to notice that it meant an apartheid system in the occupied territories. But that didn’t seem to be where his heart was. It was reflex, or lack of imagination. He worked across the aisle with Knesset members on the left for social legislation. He wanted the party to have a wider platform than ultra-nationalism.

So I was wrong, or Zevulun finally got tired of the dissonance between moderation and his party. He’s the author of a bill that would make it a criminal offense to call publicly “to negate Israel’s existence as a Jewish and democratic state, where the content of such publication would have a reasonable possibility of causing an act of hatred, disdain or disloyalty.” Offenders could be punished by a year in prison. Today, the bill passed its first hurdle, when the Knesset voted 47-34 to send it to committee.

Zevulun, you must have studied Talmud. You must understand that some arguments contain their own refutation. According to the bill you authored, you and 46 other Knesset members could surely be charged with the criminal offense of denying both the democratic and Jewish nature of the state, most certainly arousing hatred, disdain and disloyalty. What could possibly be more undemocratic and more utterly, insanely un-Jewish than banning disagreement? What could cause greater disdain for the state?

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