The View from Right Field

When Does Anti-Israel Become Antisemitism?

I have been thinking a lot about antisemitism lately.  I understand people can be opposed to some, or even many, of the policies Israel has pursued and is pursuing vis-à-vis Palestinians (both before and since October 7).  The issues between Israelis and Palestinians are difficult, and I don’t know the answers.  In this regard, I remember when I was a kid and I would go to my grandparents’ place in central Minnesota for two weeks each summer.  My grandparents had a little souvenir plaque on the wall that read: “Don’t judge a man until you have walked a mile in his moccasins”.  Which is probably a useful thing to keep in mind with respect to the Israeli-Palestinian question – for everybody.

But my concern is different than that.  I’m not talking about what Israelis and Palestinians think about each other.  I’m talking about people in America, and I’m wondering whether, at some point, if we’re not careful, anti-Israel views in America might turn into real antisemitism.

The Holocaust and “Never Again”. I Wish It Were So, But It Isn’t.

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, except people don’t.  After the Holocaust, the pledge was “Never Again” – except it happens again and again.  

Last Saturday’s Wall Street Journal had an article on “The Communities That Risked Everything to Rescue Jews.”  It was a moving article about countries (Denmark, Albania), islands (Zakynthos, a Greek isle), and communities  (the Frenchtown of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon) who protected their Jews. 

But how many people are risking much of anything to protect others today.  Consider Rwanda in 1994.  Think of the “bug out” of Kabul in 2021.  And why did it take the U.S. and Germany so long to finally send tanks to Ukraine, where Vladimir Putin has been deliberately attacking civilians with rockets for months?  Some of those are not genocides (“genocide” is a word too easily thrown around today), but there are still innocent lives being lost that we could be doing something about.

But perhaps the most depressing thing on this Holocaust Remembrance Day may be the fact that the one thing uniting more and more of the far right and far left is hatred of Jews.

China Does Care (A Little) About World Opinion

In a November 2 post on social media, Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai accused former vice-premier Zhang Gaoli of sexually assaulting her on at least one occasion.  The post was promptly taken down, all mention of Ms. Shuai was taken off Chinese social media, and she went incommunicado.  Pro tennis players around the world started wondering where she was and how she was doing.  And unlike the NBA, which folded like a cheap tent when a Houston Rockets general manager supported Hong Kong in a tweet, they didn’t back down.

China normally doesn’t respond to these kinds of complaints.  Ask the Uighurs.  For that matter, ask the Dali Lama.  But with the Winter Olympics coming up in February and tennis stars continuing to ask where Ms. Shuai was (before China tried to ban tennis players, the Women’s Tennis Association said it would pull out of China), China gave in – at least partially.

Communist. Fascist. Racist. What’s Next?

From what I read in the newspaper and hear on the radio, apparently I am a racist because I am not in favor of changing the name of Lake Shore Drive to Jean Baptiste Point DuSable Drive.¹  The fact that “Lake Shore Drive” is a classic Chicago street name, known pretty much around the world, right up there with “State Street, that great street,” and “Michigan Drive, the Magnificent Mile,” doesn’t matter.  Jean Baptiste Point DuSable was a Black Haitian and not wanting to name Lake Shore Drive after him is racist.²  It’s sort of like Humpty Dumpty:

“‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that's all.’”

How Will Their Great-Grandchildren Look at Today’s Woke Leaders?

One of the favorite activities of the woke seems to be looking back in history and re-judging our leaders of the past based on the standards today.  George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves; their statues have to come down.  Abraham Lincoln didn’t treat Native Americans right, not to mention all of the racist things he said; schools need to be renamed.  Ulysses S. Grant owned a slave¹; his statue must come down.  And so on.  It is never a matter of looking at the total of what these people did or looking at what they did in light of the times in which they lived.  Or even looking to see if they helped push the direction of history a little bit in the right direction.  If they didn’t fully live up to our standards today, their statue comes down; the school is renamed. 

Defund the Police – Or Neighborhood People and Neighborhood Police Talking to Each Other?

Because of the pandemic, we were in River Forest last month for the Fourth of July.  We haven’t been here for the Fourth all that often, and what I noticed this year was the amount of fireworks.  By 9:00 pm on the Fourth, there was a steady drone of fireworks, like a low bass humming.  You heard lots of individual fireworks, but even when there weren’t fireworks going off nearby, there was a constant drone that went on all night and into the early morning. 

There may have been more of it this year because of the shelter-at-home and social distancing orders that were just ending.  Still, it got me to thinking.  If all the fireworks and the constant noise bothered me in River Forest, where there really weren’t that many fireworks (most of what I was hearing was coming from neighboring towns), what must it be like in parts of Chicago where it’s not just fireworks and it’s not just one or two nights a year.

Abraham Lincoln on Our Founders

The new view of the United States, as seen in The New York Times’ “1619 Project,” is that United States history rests on slavery and white supremacy and that “[o]ur democracy’s founding ideas were false when they were written.”  I disagree.  I do not think our Founders were liars and hypocrites when they wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  I think they were in a position where they had to compromise with a terrible evil or give up their hopes for a new country built on a new set of principles.  What they did, therefore, was to compromise, but to do it in a way that kept those ideals alive for the future.

It is easy, looking back at people in history, to judge them on today’s principles.  What at the time were principled positions now look, to some, like racism, sexism, prejudice – and worse.  I’m not going to argue that point here, though I wonder how our views will look to people a hundred or more years from now.

Plantation Weddings – And Wedding Cakes

In Thursday’s Chicago Tribune, Lesley Williams wrote that “plantation weddings” are another symbol of the slavocracy we need to get rid of.  I’m not going to go into that question.  What I found interesting in her article, rather, was the comment by a photographer (and historian) that he has, in Ms. Williams’ words, “decided he could not in good conscience continue to photograph plantation weddings.”

I understand the photographer has conscience issues with photographing weddings at former slave plantations.  But I was wondering how this view, which I assume many people would approve of, fits with the view many also have, especially on the left, that bakery owners, and photographers, should not be able to refuse to bake cakes for, or take pictures at, same-sex weddings because such weddings violate their religious beliefs, i.e., their conscience.

Hong Kong: Freedom’s Light Still Shines

Three weeks ago, on the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, people were wondering what went wrong.  Democracy is on the decline in eastern Europe and elsewhere, while nasty populism is rising all over the world, including the United States.

But then, when things seem dark, a tiny ray of light shines, a delicate little flower blooms.  In 1977, it was Vaclav Havel and Charter ’77 in Communist East Europe.  In the 1970s, it was Spain, Portugal and Greece leaving dictatorships behind and becoming free.  Next were Taiwan and South Korea.  In 1994, it was Nelson Mandela in the South Africa of apartheid.

Cuba’s Ladies in White Win the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty

Everybody has heard of the Nobel Peace Prize.  Over the years, it has honored people for doing great things.  Teddy Roosevelt in 1906 for negotiating the end of the Russo-Japanese War, George Marshall in 1953, Norman Borlaug in 1970 for the green revolution, and Lech Walesa in 1983. 

There have been deserving winners recently, too, such as Malala Yousafzai, a 15-year Pakistani girl, who won in 2014 after being shot in the head by the Taliban for going to school and writing about it, and Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese human rights activist, who won in 2010 but was not allowed to go to Oslo to collect the prize (surprise).  He also became just the second winner to die in custody.

Others, however, have been questionable, such as Kofi Annan and the United Nations in 2001.  (The people of Rwanda were not consulted.  See, inter alia, here and here.)  Three recent winners seem to have won mostly because they weren’t George W. Bush: Jimmy Carter in 2002,¹ Al Gore in 2007 (he should have won the presidential election in 2000), and Barack Obama in 2009 (George W. Bush was finally gone).  Also, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons won in 2013.  We have seen how successful they have been.