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Anonymous-Remailer@See.Comment.Header (Buck Turgidson) wrote in message news:<WZH6AB1437467.5170601852@usenet-nomads.com>...
> AN AMERICAN PORTRAIT/Sept. 11 - July 29/
> 
> Internal conflict for progressive American Jews/Worries about anti-
> Semitism are resulting in torn feelings about politics
> 
> Glen Martin, Chronicle Staff Writer
> 
> Since Sept. 11, the nation has grappled with what it means to be an 
> American in the wake of a historic tragedy. Our staff is traveling 
> across the U.S. and the spectrum of the American experience for 
> American Portraits, which will appear through Sept. 11, 2002.
> 
> Right after the planes smashed into the World Trade Center, San 
> Francisco State University Professor Laurie Zoloth returned from an 
> East Coast visit by a uniquely American and prosaic conveyance -- a 
> Greyhound bus.
> 
> Her traveling companions were neurologists and fellow academicians, 
> all embarked on an unexpected continental road trip because the 
> nation's air industry had been paralyzed by international terrorism.
> 
> It was an exhilarating interlude, said Zoloth, director of the 
> university's Jewish Studies Program -- a genuine journey of 
> discovery, one that planted seeds of change in the way Zoloth viewed 
> herself, her religion, the nation, the world.
> 
> "We spent the entire trip talking about neurology and brain function, 
> about free will, about the essential elements of good and evil," 
> recalled Zoloth, a woman with a facile tongue and a sense of humor 
> that rides the balance between dry and absurd.
> 
> "I was tremendously gratified by what I saw as we drove across the 
> country, " Zoloth said. "Everywhere we went there was enormous 
> solidarity, the sense that we were all in this thing together."
> 
> But that all changed when Zoloth got back to San Francisco State -- a 
> historically liberal school in what is arguably the nation's most 
> liberal city.
> 
> Here, she found that the climate for progressive Jews such as herself 
> was suddenly different.
> 
> "I was horrified," Zoloth said. "First, a senior member of the 
> faculty, a person I consider both bright and thoughtful, approached 
> me with a theory that was making the rounds -- the CIA and Mossad had 
> collaborated on the bombing and had given Jews working in the (World 
> Trade Center) towers advance warning. She allowed she considered it a 
> credible theory. I was stunned."
> 
> At that point, said Zoloth, "I remembered thinking: 'This is 
> different. This is really bad.' "
> 
> WHAT IS AN AMERICAN?
> 
> It all got Zoloth -- a religious Jew, an unabashed leftist, a 
> longtime supporter of progressive causes -- thinking about just what 
> it means to be a patriot. A lover of one's country -- in this case, 
> America.
> 
> "It occurred to me that what we all have in common as Americans is a 
> love of democracy, of civil discourse -- the opposite of anti-Semitic 
> diatribe," she said. "In an earlier time, Americans loved both their 
> country and radical ideas. Walt Whitman served as a nurse in the 
> Civil War. The idea that one's country is achieved through work and 
> love, I think, is a valid one -- and particularly germane to this 
> time."
> 
> So Zoloth did something most people would consider out of character 
> for a political progressive: She displayed an American flag in front 
> of her Berkeley home. As an emblem of her love, not jingoistic pride.
> 
> Zoloth witnessed the exertion of new pressures on the American 
> tradition of reasoned discourse during the May rallies at San 
> Francisco State.
> 
> Opinions differ on precisely what happened: Jewish students, faculty 
> and their supporters say pro-Palestinian crowds called for the 
> destruction of Israel, chanted anti-Semitic slogans and threatened 
> violence to "Zionists." Palestinian supporters say they, too, were 
> subject to verbal abuse.
> 
> Clearly, the rallies were ugly and disturbing. They made news across 
> the country and sent a shudder through the nation's progressive 
> Jewish community --
> 
> the urban intellectuals and professionals who have historically 
> espoused leftist or liberal causes, supported the concept of a 
> Palestinian state, championed the peace movement in Israel.
> 
> "I'm not abandoning the Left," said Zoloth, "but the Left cannot 
> defend anti-Semitism. I support calls for Palestinian freedom and 
> statehood, but that's very, very different from calling for the 
> destruction of Israel." 'SENSE OF EMBATTLEMENT'
> 
> Todd Gitlin, a professor of journalism at New York University and an 
> authority on media and society, said many progressive American Jews 
> were experiencing troubled internal dialogues similar to Zoloth's.
> 
> "There is a sense of embattlement," Gitlin said, "a sense that they 
> are on the edge of the abyss. They feel their backs are against the 
> wall, and that it's 1936 in Germany again. Personally, I think they 
> are mistaken -- but some of the ferocity they are meeting on the 
> Palestinian side certainly is not conducive to their equanimity."
> 
> That's understating things for Mary Felstiner, a professor of history 
> at San Francisco State. The trade center attacks, the violence in 
> Palestine and most particularly the rallies at the university have 
> left her in a state of emotional trauma.
> 
> "I've gone from being a socially engaged and active person to a 
> virtual recluse," Felstiner said recently in her office at the 
> university -- the first time she has been on campus in months. "I 
> can't bear being psychologically fragile -- I'm simply not used to 
> it. But I feel withdrawn, paralyzed."
> 
> Felstiner is an authority on the history of genocide, and her courses 
> on that subject are heavily attended. Her knowledge of the field, she 
> said, invests her view of the post-9/11 world with a particularly 
> ominous significance.
> 
> "The language of anti-Semitism always carries with it the overtures 
> of genocide," said Felstiner. "It is an abstract code, detached from 
> reality, so there is no real way to defend against it. It makes me 
> feel like European Jews may have felt in the 1930s, when they were 
> accused of horrendous things."
> 
> Andrew Moss, a professor of epidemiology specializing in HIV and AIDS 
> at the University of San Francisco and a self-described "old leftie," 
> said he had gone to a San Francisco peace rally earlier in the year 
> and been disturbed at the blatant Nazi iconography he saw there.
> 
> Moss observed one of the demonstration participants waving an Israeli 
> flag - - at least, it looked like an Israeli flag, until he saw that 
> the Star of David had been replaced with a swastika.
> 
> "It was kind of shocking," said Moss. "It was utterly anti-Semitic, 
> and that's what really has (Jews) disturbed -- this flood of anti-
> Semitism all over the world, this crazed irrational stuff that is 
> becoming common coinage."
> 
> YOUNG JEWS
> 
> Some authorities say the adjustment to America in the aftermath of 
> 9/11 has been especially difficult for young Jews, who are bewildered 
> by the unfamiliar experience of abruptly finding themselves the 
> objects of vituperative hate.
> 
> According to many young Jewish San Francisco State students, the May 
> rallies were a philosophical turning point. Although opinions differ 
> on the actual events at the rallies, these students claim they were 
> harangued with vile anti-Semitic diatribes -- even threatened with 
> death.
> 
> "During the rallies, (Jewish students) had people screaming at them 
> that 'Hitler didn't finish the job,' and that they ought to go back 
> to Germany on Holocaust Remembrance Day," said Seth Brysk, the 
> executive director of San Francisco Hillel, a community activist 
> organization for Bay Area Jewish college students.
> 
> "Many wanted to reach out to the Arab and Palestinian communities, 
> but now they feel targeted, and that has had an impact," Brysk said. 
> "They feel their legitimacy is questioned. It wears on them."
> 
> So much so, said Brysk, that some students hide jewelry with Star of 
> David emblems when in public.
> 
> "They've become afraid of being identified as Jews," he said. The 
> fear and anxiety are generating a compulsion for action among 
> progressive Jews, Gitlin and other observers say, ranging from 
> increased donations to Israeli charities to ardent support for Prime 
> Minister Ariel Sharon's aggressive response to Palestinian suicide 
> bombers.
> 
> Gitlin said it would be unfortunate if the current unease among 
> progressive Jews precluded discussion of a political solution to the 
> Palestinian conflict.
> 
> GUILT AT BEING AMERICAN
> 
> "American (Jews) have this apocalyptic sense of danger in regard to 
> Israel, more than Israeli Jews," said Gitlin. "American Jews feel a 
> certain guilt that they are American, and this is leading them to a 
> serious rejection of political solutions. It's, 'Let's you and him 
> fight.' They write the checks, but the Israelis have to fight. That's 
> very problematic."
> 
> Felstiner says she is convinced Jews must resist any emergent anti-
> Semitism here or abroad -- but she's not sure how.
> 
> "On a local level, people have to shout back, though I'm not a 
> particularly good example," she said. "Internationally? I don't know. 
> Because I don't know what I'm prepared to do. I have a kid who's of 
> military age, and I don't know if I'm prepared for him to go. Why say 
> it should be some other kid?"
> 
> For Zoloth, hope these days can best be found where it all began: 
> ground zero.
> 
> "I was just at the World Trade Center site," she said. "It's an 
> extraordinary thing. Thousands of people have left mementos there, 
> but it's the visitors that really get to you. They're Americans from 
> all over. It's as though they're saying: I'm here. I'm in this. 
> Whatever this America is -- I'm part of it. I'm proud to be part of 
> it."
> 
> ===============================================================
> 
>      - Buck Turgidson     turgidson AT nym DOT alias DOT net
> 
>          "Christianity was invented by the jews as a
>           tool with which to destroy the White Race."

We are sending 10 million a day while some of our senior citizens have
to make a choice between food and medications.

Earl