Quote:
"A few weeks ago a party of some fifty Belzer Chassidic teenage school boys from Antwerp, together with two of their rebbes, were taken on a school outing to Beringen Mijn in Limburg, Belgium. It is a tourist centre based on old, disused mines that recreate the awful conditions of miners during the Industrial Revolution.
When they arrived at the local youth hostel, a group of twenty young adult and teenage Muslims gathered around and started stoning the building, smashing windows and doors and threatening to kill them. The local police were called, who advised the Chassidim that they could not protect them and encouraged them to withdraw and return to Antwerp."
[From a posting by Jeremy Rosen, JROD list]
There were three utterly predictable responses to this outrage.
The socialists defended the response of the local police. The ultra-right were outraged at the behaviour of the Muslims. And the Antwerper Chassidim felt that withdrawing was the right thing to have done.
All three reactions are absolute bollocks.
After determining that the local cops weren't going to do jack, the bocherim should've grabbed sticks and given those thugs a thrashing.
Turning the other cheek is part of Christian ideology (just like progroms, by the way), and has never proven particularly effective. Nor is it observed much by Christians.
What Antwerpers, not only Jews but Gentiles as well, should've done after the bocherim retreated, is visited Beringen the next day and brought a bad attitude along for the ride. Such a response, by it's very unpredictability, would have a cautionary effect on future incidents.
Yes, yes, I know what that would actually mean.
Gentiles all over Belgium would blame all Jews, and confront their Jewish neighbors elsewhere in Belgium accusatorily - and those Jews would not be automatically inclined to say "those were Antwerpeners, your problem is with Antwerp, what the divvil does that have to do with me, drop dead you pillock", but would probably speak out and... condemn... the... act... as... a... chillul... Hashem.
The problem with Jews is that they are always cognizant of the impact their actions may have on other Jews.
On the one hand, there is the imperative to not commit a chillul Hashem - to not by their acts or ethics misrepresent or bring disgrace to the covenant.
On the other hand, there is the knowledge that an offense perceived in Odessa will cause a pogrom in Kiev.
And alas, no one would say "those were Antwerpeners".
The Belzers don't think of themselves strongly that way. The Antwerpener Gentiles don't think of them strongly that way. The Turks and Moroccans in Belgium don't think of them strongly that way. And no-one else in Belgium thinks of them strongly that way.
What the world needs is Chassidic football hooligans.
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A little day-dream
A train filled with rowdy Chassidishe yingerleit is stopped several miles out of town. Provincial civic fathers wring their hands and wail "myn hemel, it is the Antwerper Chossids, oh woe", before calling in the riot police from several burgs to defuse a confrontation. There are multiple arrests. The next day the Gazet van Antwerp newspaper demands apologies from those local authorities on behalf of all outraged Antwerpeners, and several lawsuits are filed against police and civic officials.
A snooded mother snarls on television that she is furious, "furious, I tell you, my darling little Dovid was off to enjoy the game with his friends, those cops have unfair praeconceptions, what is this world coming to!?!" The burgomaster of Antwerpen then refuses to extend co-operation to the investigation, declaring it "flawed and biased from the very git-go. And supporters of the Diamantplein Yeshiva soccer team are much better than that bunch from Yesiba De Los Pintos anyhow - at least they're not a bunch of pathetic Rotterdammed losers!"
Two days later, the released Chassidim are welcomed home by the local college students, with bands and banners at the station. Fraternity Gimmel Hey Tav celebrates with marathon shiurim about 'the relevance of the Makabim in contemporary society'.
Why not?
10 comments:
From Wikipedia on the second Judean War(lest I be accused):
The Romans fared very poorly during the initial revolt facing a completely unified Jewish force (unlike during the First Jewish-Roman War, where Flavius Josephus records three separate Jewish armies fighting each other for control of the Temple Mount during the three weeks time after the Romans had breached Jerusalem's walls and were fighting their way to the center). A complete Roman legion with auxiliaries was annihilated. The new state knew only one year of peace. The Romans committed no less than twelve legions, amounting to one third to one half of the entire Roman army, to reconquer this now independent state. Being outnumbered and taking heavy casualties, the Romans refused to engage in an open battle and instead adopted a scorched earth policy which decimated the Judean populace, slowly grinding away at the will of the Judeans to sustain the war. Bar Kokhba took up refuge in the fortress of Betar. The Romans eventually captured it and killed all the defenders. According to Cassius Dio, 580,000 Jews were killed, 50 fortified towns and 985 villages razed.
I know that the disastrous results are used to justify an approach marked by patient forbearance throughout the next millennia. An acceptance of the pain of exile.
But by the same token, patient forbearance is the positive spin on the cowed attitude of the Dutch during WWII. This from the same nation that fought an apocalyptic war against Spain for eighty years that saw the population reduced by nearly fifty percent (from 3 million to 2 million), the same nation that broke the dikes and stopped the French at the water-line.
In the fourteenth century there were probably barely over a million Dutch. Now there are sixteen million in the Kingdom of the Netherlands, plus six million Flemings, around two million Afrikaners, well over twenty million of Dutch descent in North America, and pockets elsewhere - we are not an endangered species. We could've afforded to lose more in the "fight" against the Germans.
Especially as the survival of the Netherlands is not dependent on the kindness and honour of our allies. The fact that the Netherlands after WWII still exists is due solely to that continued existence being useful to the Allies. If there ever is another European war, the Germans, French, and English will chew us up and subsume us. Treaties preserve peace, but are broken during war. Small nations have no business trusting the kindheartedness of bigger neighbors, but are better served by their own indigestibility.
It was the misfortune of Israel to fight the biggest baddest empire of the time, no?
It still serves as an example to the nations. To conquer those who will not bow lays waste the very country the exploitation of which would make the war profitable. But Israel had to be destroyed, lest other territories in the Roman empire also rebel - even in defeat, Israel was an example.
Better Betar than an occupation. And better safety from one's own stubborn pugnaciousness than the variable kindness of an unconcerned civitat.
The Europeans have gladly seized upon any excuse to hate America, because we liberated them (and in my Dutch voice, we had no other choice but to be liberated by them). The Europeans are protected by America, but resent them.
The Antwerper Yidden would be well served by a biliousness that brooked no incidents. If the result of pounding on Jews was a response that soured the stomach, Turks and Moroccans in Europe would think twice, and the Gentile masses would pay more attention.
In these days of managing taxable populations to maximize revenue (no matter how sugared over politics is presented), no nation will gladly see paying members of society pounded - unless they themselves acquiesce.
Jews form a block big enough in Antwerp that they are listened to.
It is time that they play ball, not as a community enclosed, but as one of the major building blocks of a wider community.
Cowedness merely emboldens bastards, but buys no peace.
[I'm caffeinated to the eye-brows as a I write this - hence the prolixity and heat.]
Actually, I think you misunderstood my point - I was trying to say that at one point the Jews were brave enough to stand up to an army the size of twelve legions and fight to the death.
I saw the point - and I agree with that point - but I decided to slam the door on the facts underpinning that point being used to argue for acquiescing.
As other readers might do.
The attitude that one is better served by turning the other cheek is bolstered, alas, by the example of Masada.
I believe that in fact communities all over golus have used the destruction of Jewish independence in the holy land as justification for turning the other cheek.
But if Muslims in Europe can get the civil authorities to pay attention, why not the Jews?
Jews are still brave enough..... but only when they know it will not adversely affect other Jews.
It is that threat of hostageness that emasculates. Hence my argument ""those were Antwerpeners, your problem is with Antwerp, what the divvil does that have to do with me...".
Force the population of Antwerp to say the same. 'Those were Antwerpeners - we may not like 'em, but dammit, their ours, and you have pissed all of us off now'.
Hostageness on one side has to be replaced by civic solidarity. The fault is with the Jews for not seeing that, and with the Gentiles in Antwerp for not feeling that.
[No wonder the Flemings want to break away from the Wallons - they are unable to feel that they're all in it together. At this rate there will eventually be no Belgium.... and soon after no Flemings, no Walloons, no Muslim Belgians, no Jewish Belgians - just a shallow drabness of obedient European taxpayers.]
By the way, that mentality also caries over to my support for Israel in demonstrations. I realize that whatever gets hollered on the streets of SF has bugger-all effect outside of SF, but a fully differentiated civic unity is infinitely preferable to a non-offensive sameness.
To put it slightly differently: either we all get to belly-ache, or eventually none of us do.
This of course as part of the what that makes me tick, entirely aside from my pro-Israel ideology as a why of my ticking.
BOTH, I don't think it is a question of what will happen to the Jews elsewhere or worrying about chillul HaShem...
I think it is just the weariness of knowing that no matter where you are, everyone hates you. I think the USA and Mexico may be the only exceptions.
Other than Roma gypsies maybe, I can't think of another nation like mine.
I am not disagreeing with your sentiment, nor am I giving up and whining, but nonetheless... The Holocaust thing in Iran is a perfect example. Where is the outrage??? Sure you have the US and England, Germany and France. But what about everyone else - how about Hungary, Greece, Romania, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Serbia, Croatia, The Low Countries, Italy? These countries all know what happened. They should have been in Iran's face screaming. Bloody murder. This is worse than apartheid in South Africa - where the fuck was 'Ain't gonna be Sun City' video against Iran? Where is Bono and Sean Penn?
Where is Bono and Sean Penn?
Not to sound snide or sarcastic, nor to cast aspersions ('cause I don't even have a clue where they actually were), but I'm guessing that the socially conscious crowd were probably off somewhere protesting that a wall that saves lives is nevertheless an offense against humanity if even only one olive farmer can't get to even only one olive tree.
I get you. But it is nevertheless profoundly irritating to be outnumbered on the issue of Israel and the Jews.
One doesn't naturally like to be outnumbered. Nor is it healthy.
I'm still getting the Dutch anti-Americanism that was current during the seventies (experienced first-hand) out of my system..... and it sure ain't helping that that same blinkered and self-righteous hatred of America and everything American seems to be back bigger than ever.
As also, unfortunately, is European apologesis about their other hatreds. Which may in fact never have gone away, but merely gone into the shadows for two generations.
People are only embarrassed once they have demonstrably gone too far. But often they are only embarrassed. Not reformed.
..typical Olandishe geratel against faine Antwerp-Chasiedim.
Kom op luie bonk en doe iets inplaats van daar zitten zeuren. Kous.
Beste Kous,
Helaas kan ik er weinig aan doen anders dan dat geratel - ik zit in San Francisco, en anders dan schreeuwen kan ik van deze hoek niet. Ook hier, helaas, heeft men ietwat de neiging Joden als 'niet-ons' te beschouwen - maar lang niet zo erg als in Europa.
Recentelijk twee boeken gelezen - Londonistan (hetgeen ietsje extreem is, maar wel een goede schop jegens Englesche heilige koeien), en het boek van Ian Buruma over de moord op Theo van Gogh.
Dat laatst genoemde is een beetje te 'Ollandsch in uitkijkpunt.
Bijde boeken geven een zuur beeld van de huidige Europeesche situatie.
Yeah, it's a sad irony that the only time we seem to hear about Haredi shows of force are in incidents like this: http://www.forward.com/articles/police-clash-with-hasidim-in-tel-aviv-suburb/
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