Friday, April 16, 2010

Why Take It Out on the Star of David?

A Judy Mandelbaum is really really bothered about violence in the Holy Land.

Jewish violence, that is.

Actually, suspected Jewish violence.

She blogs at Salon and writes, in connection with a claim a defacement and tree-cutting:
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...The Mogen Dovid is a symbol that has experienced a roller coaster of shifting meanings over the centuries. The six-pointed star was a symbol known to many religious and spiritual traditions and only became firmly associated with Judaism and Zionism in the late nineteenth century. But its power as a Jewish symbol derives less from what Jews have done with it than from what anti-Semites have tried in vain to make it into...After the war the new State of Israel chose the Star of David as its national emblem. Thus it has gone from a symbol of pride to a symbol of shame and fear and then back again to a symbol of pride and endurance against impossible odds.

Will it return to being a symbol of shame and fear -- perhaps permanently? With attacks like the ones I described above on the increase, and now that the Israeli military has approved plans that could lead to the mass deportation of tens of thousands of West Bank residents on short notice, Palestinians are increasingly experiencing the Star of David as a threat to their very existence. This should be a scandal to everyone who remembers what the star has meant in the past. My message to Israelis is simple: Stop doing this. NOW.


I left this comment:

Just how does Judy Mandelbaum know who did what the Arabs claimed they did? Just two months ago we had a similar incident and despite arrests, no charge sheet, no trial, no nothing. In the past, Arabs have been caught cutting down their own trees.

It's complicated and I am not saying there are no extremists and hotheaded kids and outright fanatical criminals who seriously undermine what over 300,000 Jews are doing in Judea and Samaria.

But if Judy is indeed correct, how then is the Islamic symbol of a crescent, or the color green or, as in Switzerland, the minaret to be viewed when we know for sure that hundreds of suicide bombers all around the world have killed thousands and not should defaced walls be graffiti?

Or is it that since Judy is Jewish she must prove her liberal/progressive/radical worth?

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