Hate Crimes
This is a guest post by Dave Rich
Today’s post by David T about the murder of Ilan Halimi is one of the most sobering I have read on Harry’s Place for some time.
One of CST’s main functions is to record and analyse antisemitic incidents – hate crimes – that are reported to us here in the UK. Nothing like the kidnapping, torture and murder of Ilan Halimi has happened in this country in living memory and I desperately hope it never does.
The disagreement over whether or not Halimi’s murder was antisemitic revolves around the fact that it can be construed as having both rational and irrational motives. The rational motive is similar to that of a lot of crime: to make money. The irrational motive is what makes it a hate crime: if it was driven by hatred of the victim due to his race, religion, colour, sexuality or other identifiable group label. In crimes like this, some people have a tendency to over-emphasise one motive to the exclusion of the other, when in fact both are often relevant and it is the interplay between them that defines the nature of the crime.
Another example of this is in the news today. Four men have been arrested in New York, accused of trying to bomb a synagogue and a Jewish community centre, as well as to shoot down American military aircraft. The group had been under surveillance by the FBI, who ensured that they did not have real bombs. During this surveillance, one of the defendants told an FBI informant in June 2008 that, because of his family connection to Afghanistan, he was “upset about the war there” and “unhappy that many Muslim people were being killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan by the United States Military forces.” Five months later, the same defendant told the same informant: “I hate those motherfuckers, those fucking Jewish bastards…I would like to get a synagogue.”
There are some who will identify his desire to attack American military aircraft as a rational, though misguided and illegitimate, response to his anger over American military activity in Afghanistan: the ‘foreign policy’ explanation for terrorism. Others will explain the attempt to blow up a synagogue as antisemitism, pure and simple. Some may try to elide the two, by assuming that because this person was angry about the war in Afghanistan, he was probably angry about Palestine too, thereby explaining the selection of a synagogue as a target.
Think this is a straw man? Think instead of Mumbai, and the argument put forward that the selection of Chabad House for attack was an anti-Israel act, not an antisemitic one, because the sole surviving terrorist said that it was chosen to avenge Palestinian suffering. What was striking was the effort to grasp at any evidence that the perpetrators of such a horrifically inhumane act, requiring a total absence of human pity or empathy, were rational actors.
There are plenty of examples of people explaining attacks on synagogues, or other Jewish targets, as rational acts: the understandable, though wrong, response of angry people to what they see in Israel/Palestine. Normally, the person ‘understanding’ such attacks is at pains to make clear, quite rightly, that they do not support such acts, just that they are trying to explain them. Here is an example from Ben White, arguing that he is not antisemitic, but that he understands how people can look at Israel and dislike Jews:
The Guardian article…cites a poll undertaken by the Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt, in which thirty-six per cent of participants said they would agree with the statement “I can understand very well that some people are unpleasant towards Jews.” This was taken to indicate an increase in anti-Semitism, since it was a dramatic increase from 20% three years ago.
I was somewhat startled by this, since I do not consider myself an anti-Semite, yet I can also understand why some are. There are, in fact, a number of reasons. One is the state of Israel, its ideology of racial supremacy and its subsequent crimes committed against the Palestinians. It is because Zionists have always sought to equate their colonial project with Judaism that some misguidedly respond to what they see on their televisions with attacks on Jews or Jewish property.
…
I have just provided a by no means comprehensive list of reasons why “I can understand very well that some people are unpleasant towards Jews.” I do not agree with them, but I can understand.
Many people have watched the documented rise in antisemitism in recent years and asked why so much of the anti-racist left has abandoned Jews to face it alone. Even amongst those on this part of the left who acknowledge the rise, there has been much shrugging of shoulders and little solidarity. This is Ken Loach, in Brussels a few weeks ago:
”I know there have been recently statements, or presentations, about the rise in antisemitism. Well, of course we all abhor racism in whatever form, wherever it comes. But nothing has been a greater instigator of antisemitism than the self-proclaimed Jewish state itself. And until we deal with that, until that is acknowledged, then racism, I’m afraid, will be with us.”
In other words, Israel is the cause of antisemitism, and until Israel is sorted out, society will just have to live with the antisemitism.
There is a worrying idea on the anti-Zionist left that what rise there may have been in contemporary antisemitism is the product of a rational thought process, albeit based on wrong information or mistaken interpretation of that information. According to this line of thought, a person gets angry about Israel and, based on their mistaken association of Israel with their local synagogue, or their ignorance of other, better, forms of protest, they go and firebomb the synagogue. It’s a rational thought process, so the thinking goes, certainly wrong but sadly quite common. Similarly, Halimi’s murderers, so the idea goes, were just criminals who wanted money. Based on their mistaken association of Jews with money, they picked a Jew as their victim. Any antisemitism they displayed was merely an aggravating factor in the crime, not its main driver, and certainly not something that should be prioritised for particular concern.
The problem with ascribing rationality to racism is that you deny the hatred and bigotry which forms its central component. Neo-Nazis never get this excuse: when they firebomb a synagogue, everyone knows it is because they hate Jews. Nobody disputes that it is a hate crime, because nobody accepts the neo-Nazis’ starting premise that there is a Jewish conspiracy to destroy the white race through immigration. But if the attackers are perceived to be driven by anger over Israel, then for many anti-Zionists who share that premise – who perhaps hate Israel themselves and recognise the urge to act on that hatred, but would never do so – then the firebombing of a synagogue is a crime, for sure, but not a hate crime; there is no bigotry, just a mistaken politics; no antisemitism, no need for anti-racist solidarity and certainly no need for Zionism and Israel. I am yet to see anyone try to explain the attempted bombing of a synagogue in New York as an understandable, though misguided, expression of anger about Israel. But I won’t be surprised if someone does.
Comments
| 21 May 2009, 4:23 pm |
The New York Times coverage of the Synagogue bomb plot was interesting; the piece did not even mention that the group of men were all Muslims until much further down in the article. The NY Times also declined to include a comment by one of the men that was picked up by other newspapers:
One of the suspects, James Cromitie, a k a Abdul Rahman, bragged that blowing up the synagogues would be a “piece of cake,” the feds said.
“I hate those motherf – - -ers, those f – - -ing Jewish bastards . . . I would like to get a synagogue,” Cromitie told an informant, according to a criminal complaint.
(source: New York Post)
| 21 May 2009, 4:34 pm |
Yes, that is rather serendipitous! Although he seems to be making a slightly different point.
Just to clarify re. Ken Loach: as far as I am concerned, making a film about and with Eric Cantona provides significant mitigation for his politics. Rather like Michael Rosen and his books.
| 21 May 2009, 4:38 pm |
I’ve just copied and pasted the first comment on the Independent’s take on this:
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Comments
( Leave a comment )
they must be freed!
leon_rosgarten wrote:Thursday, 21 May 2009 at 07:44 am (UTC)
These innocent men were duped and framed in a zionist plot to defame Islam, a religion that holds peace and justice as its highest values. The real criminals are those that maintain zionist-racist temples and other institutions on american soil, initiate and finance the imperialist neocon movement that holds the entire american nation hostage, even under Obama. The progressive public must raise its voice to defend these latest political prisoners of the us administration.
| 21 May 2009, 4:42 pm |
I can’t tell if that’s a spoof or not.
| 21 May 2009, 4:47 pm |
There’s even somebody on that board who believes that Sir Allen Stanford is Jewish. He isn’t.
| 21 May 2009, 4:48 pm |
Priceless!
Leon Rosgarten must be given his own show on Press TV at once, even if we have to bid a tearful farewell to to duclet tones of Sister Yvonne Ridley to accomplish this worthy aim!
Fanks, Seismic Shock, yer an ace!
| 21 May 2009, 4:55 pm |
Scooting over to Seismic Shock’s excellent site enlightens us; we now know that Sizer the Theologian is in league with the GAFCON bishops. No kidding.
We are obviously living in Latter Days!
| 21 May 2009, 5:00 pm |
Is it a spoof? I didn’t notice, yes I suppose it may well be.
Still, here’s another example from the Indie comments:
good targets
studentclass wrote:Thursday, 21 May 2009 at 10:50 am (UTC)
i must commend the men for choosing these targets
its a shame they couldnt pull it of but its only a matter of time before another 9/11 happens
the yanks and the zionist buddies have brought this upon themselvesno doubt the motive of retribution for the death and destruction cause in afganistan will be lost on the islamphobic media in the usa.
I don’t really know how there can be debate on this! If someone firebombed a mosque or a church, you’d blame the perpetrator not the victim.
Let’s imagine if today a newspaper published an article which detailed how the NYPD uncovered a bomb plot against an Irish pub.
Would it be acceptable to leave comments underneath suggesting this is a legitimate response to the recent report that some Catholic priests in Ireland abused children?
| 21 May 2009, 5:06 pm |
It’s not a question of acceptability. It just wouldn’t occur to anybody to do that.
| 21 May 2009, 5:06 pm |
“I can’t tell if that’s a spoof or not.”
It’s a spoof. “Leon Rosgarten” frequently posts to the Indy comments section, describing himself as a “progressive British academic”, congratulating the Iraqis and Afghans on their revolutionary spirit, and attributing immeasurable crimes against Muslims to “the Zionist entity”. The sad thing is, he often gets idiots agreeing with him.
| 21 May 2009, 5:21 pm |
True that… that’s the thing – the only time people would ever think of these connections is to parody pseudo-left commentary on antisemitism/I-P.
Racists should be opposed, perhaps pitied, but never used in the way they cynically are by those of the Loach/White school. If we want to exclude racists from politics then we can’t explain away their actions. If we include racists in our political discussions by rationalising their irrational actions then we’ve missed the point of anti-racism and have given them a boost.
| 21 May 2009, 5:40 pm |
As the social history of the US during World War Two is not one of my areas of expertise, I don’t know whether there were or were not incidents of Americans in, say, the 1941-1945 period deciding that they’d like to avenge themselves for the lives of relatives lost to Axis atrocities and military action by ‘beating the f**k out of a Kraut’ or ‘burning down a house full of f**cking N*ps’. [The appalling internment of Japanese-Americans was not mitigated by the absence of beatings and bombings and torture.] Today, it appears to be acceptable to wage proxy war in just such a tangential fashion. One might imagine a hypothetical example of a non-mainstream film director, his psyche bruised by the horrors of Gaza, tangentially avenging the wounds on his psyche by boycotting Israel while non-Palestinian youths intent on a more physical form of vengeance ‘blow up a f**cking synagogue’. Neither, of course, could possibly be deemed an expression of anti-semitism and both, of course, contribute immeasurably to some eventual peace settlement in the Middle East. I trust that social historians and psychologists in the future will get this right.
| 21 May 2009, 6:44 pm |
Ken Loach – Justifying anti-semitism.
Emma Loach – Justifying child neglect.
Like father, like daughter.
| 21 May 2009, 8:18 pm |
Dave Rich @ 21 May 2009, 4:34 pm
“Ken Loach: as far as I am concerned, making a film about and with Eric Cantona provides significant mitigation for his politics. Rather like Michael Rosen and his books.”
Too generous, Dave. Merely shows each of these two man have something about htem, other that their trotskyite crap.
| 21 May 2009, 11:07 pm |
The disagreement over whether or not Halimi’s murder was antisemitic revolves around the fact that it can be construed as having both rational and irrational motives. The rational motive is similar to that of a lot of crime: to make money.
In the ‘Troubles’ in NornIron this was know by the security forces as ‘ordinary decent crime’, as opposed to the other type – sectarian terrorism.
| 21 May 2009, 11:10 pm |
i had a debate with a friend about this. i said that the wankers who shot up mumbai had initially blamed the presence of an israeli general in kashmir advising the indian military. that is what they cited as the reason for their attack on chabad house rather than palestine. it struck me as plausible if the group involved were lashkar-e-taiba as suspected. i think that to make that point is not to excuse it, i think that when anti-terrorism intelligence is being employed then an ‘understanding’ of the motives is useful and shouldn’t be seen as sympathy. my friend suggested it was better strategy to assume radical islamists simply hate jews and that claims about palestine and kashmir are to be treated with scepticism.
| 21 May 2009, 11:22 pm |
Do you think you’d ever see this in the Groan?….
I was somewhat startled by this, since I do not consider myself an Islamophobe, yet I can also understand why some are. There are, in fact, a number of reasons. One if the Islamic concept of Ummah or a Global ‘Muslim Nation’, its ideology of intrinsic supremacy over the Kuffar and its subsequent crimes committed against the Kuffars from San Diego to Dili. It is because those promulgating Sharia have always sought to equate their colonial project with Islam that some misguidedly respond to what they see on their televisions with attacks on Muslims or Muslim property.
…
I have just provided a by no means comprehensive list of reasons why “I can understand very well that some people are unpleasant towards Muslims.” I do not agree with them, but I can understand.
| 22 May 2009, 8:11 am |
I am sure the Nazis felt they were rational too.
| 22 May 2009, 9:01 am |
Isn’t it all a question of proximate causes and final causes and all that sort of stuff?
| 22 May 2009, 9:04 am |
Sophia’s point is probably right – some of them anyway. I am sure many of those who sadly, will vote BNP in the forthcoming elections will think themselves rational in doing so. We have all heard some such comment as “I am not racist but” – and then some “cultural” or demographic justification for so voting.
The point is that such “rationalisations” are not accepted by the mainstream left in the way anti jewish “rationalisations” seems to be. Perhaps we ned to reject any distinction between “rational” and irratiional racism altogether. An objective view qwould ask whther it is bad for those treated prejudically by it (obviously), bad for any society in which it occurs – yes always.
The left ought to ask further what its effect is on social solidarity – utterly negative and always – and therefore condemn it – utterly and always.
| 22 May 2009, 9:12 am |
Identity politics isnt rational?
| 22 May 2009, 10:26 am |
Who was it that sang “Don’t let’s be beastly to the Hun?” Noel Coward? He might have penned these lyrics after the war. I forget. Anyhow, the point of this is to draw some parallel, if possible, between today’s Islamophobia Scare and the 1930s. To display symptoms of Islamophobia surely is to suffer from the most embarrassing social illness of our time. There is, of course, no rational reason at all for islamophobics to say or think what they do. Islamophobia, as any Guardianista will testify, is about as unnecessarily alarmist as, say, Teletubbyphobia. It’s merely an irrational mental disturbance. But what about Naziphobia? Was there such an ailment extant seventy odd years ago? If so, what treatment was available to the sufferers? Could we not prescribe the same medicines and treatment today to islamophobes?
| 22 May 2009, 1:40 pm |
Doctor Heath: please help me. I suspect that I’m an Islamophobe. I loathe the religion of white skinned Yvonne Ridly as much as that of brown-skinned Abu Hamza, much in the same way as I loathe the nazism of white skinned Streicher as much as that of browned-slinned grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the one who chided Himmler for not being Jew-hating enough.
‘Social illnesss’ of our time? What on earth can I do? Why on earth should I feel degraded when certain Imams describe me as a descendant of monkeys [not of pigs, of course, because I'm not Jewish - but, question, should I feel a little agrieved because pigs are supposedly more intelligent than monkeys?].
Doctor Heath, should I presume to say that these descriptions from Muslim leaders of thought do not apply to me? Should I say that those leaders have no standing and that their quotations from the Koran are of no consequence whatsoever to the majority of Muslims? Come on, Doctor Heath, in th interests of diagnosing the state of of my own case of ’social illness’, should I have any reason to feel Islamophobic?
| 22 May 2009, 2:11 pm |
Colin:
I was not intending the exact wording of my comment to be taken literally. Phobias are fears. Most of the time, they are irrational. Fear of falling from a great height, however, is rational for someone whose job requires them to clean skyscraper windows. Fear of any alien ideology that, objectively analysed, might appear threatening, bellicose or capable of inspiring others to attack you is also rational. I sympathise entirely with your views. Islamophobia is ultra-rational in regard to the minority of Muslims who do slaughter innocent people, call for non-Muslims to be slaughtered and describe people you like and me as the descendants of pigs. The asinine prigs who pontificate so sanctimoniously on the evil of Islamophobia omit to say that it is an evil only if one is describing an irrational bigotry that despises all Muslims, almost all of whom are normal people, content to leave everyone else alone and mind their own business. There appears to be no Buddhismophobia or Sikhismophobia rampant in the world. Why this is so is too obvious to need stating.
| 22 May 2009, 2:48 pm |
Doctor Heath: I don’t fear Hindus or Buddhists – or for that matter Mormons or Jews – because I don’t fear being blown up by them in my my morinng train or bus. But this still leaves me with this fear – phobe – of Muslims, whio might wish to kill me as a kuffer wherever I happen to be. Please assure me, Doctor Heath, from your knowledge of of Islamic theology, whether I have anything to fear, unless of course I’m a Jew, which I’ve already told you I’m not. But what should they do – in case I have to advise them – to escape the wrath of Muslims?
| 22 May 2009, 2:59 pm |
Colin
“What about ‘Sura [fill in number/poetic name]‘ in the Qur’aan that calls for inflicting bloodthirsty punishment on naughty women?” “Yes, but what about that passage in the Bible, you know, the ‘eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth’ business? Just as bad, or probably worse, don’t you think?” This sort of anile point scoring, indulged in often by people who aren’t even religious, has nothing much to do with most people’s lives. Most Christians don’t want ‘eye for an eye’ type restorative justice and the Muslims I know just want a quiet life and aren’t interested in stoning adulterers to death or breaking our laws in any way. Most religious books appear to have been written by men, not angels, probably in the Stone Age, and I think most people behave accordingly. As to how one can spot a nutter, I have no idea. Alas, they do exist and the phobia surrounding nutters of any religious persuasion is often disproportionate to their numbers.
| 22 May 2009, 3:27 pm |
Doctor Heath.
Why aren’t most of the Muslims you know intererested in “stoning to stoning to death of adulterers.’? You mean, no stonings, here in England or in the tribal lands?
My English Christian ancesters about 300 years ago had a phobia about witches and burnt them.
A long time ago
Colin
| 22 May 2009, 3:48 pm |
Colin
Perhaps we’re not connecting here. The Muslims I know are Sufis. Whether this has anything to do with their pacifism is not something I spend any time pondering. I’ve always assumed they’re normal for the same reasons most everyone else is normal.
I don’t know where the point lies in the mention of witch-burning.
| 23 May 2009, 2:11 pm |
If it were the case that the general population of America felt that it didn’t matter were the America population to become primarily Spanish-speaking sometime in the next century, then it would certainly not be for anyone like me to say this is undesirable.
Perhaps someone should ask the British public: Do you mind if England becomes a majority Islamic country next century?
| 24 May 2009, 6:18 pm |
“Ken Loach: as far as I am concerned, making a film about and with Eric Cantona provides significant mitigation for his politics. Rather like Michael Rosen and his books”
That’s like saying that Goebbels was all right because he painted nice pictures.
“The appalling internment of Japanese-Americans was not mitigated by the absence of beatings and bombings and torture”
So things wouldn’t have been worse for them had there been beatings and bombings and torture? What nonsense.
I think White and Loach might be making an attempt to play off racial tensions in order to advance a political agenda, although I hope I’m wrong.
Have you seen Ben White’s response to the synagogue plot?
http://seismicshock.wordpress.com/2009/05/21/ben-white-sees-conspiracy-in-synagogue-bomb-plot/
might be interesting to add that in… he has already proved your point!