So, "What's Up With Jews?"

Stanley Fish is the best writer still writing for the New York Times, unsurprisingly. Check out his latest column, one I find seemingly devoid of any 'intent-to-spin' (an admirable characteristic journalists everywhere should be forced to emulate). Excerpted...

So which is it? Jews are a success story, or Jews are a plague? Don’t mess with Jews, or blame Jews for everything in sight the moment you get drunk? Jews are victims (expulsions, pogroms, the Holocaust), or Jews are victimizers (rapacious bankers, shyster lawyers, land-grabbers and ethnic cleansers)? Jews are devils and sub-human vermin (a Nazi trope), or Jews are God’s chosen people?

The answer is all of the above and much more, for, as many before me have observed, the Jew as a cultural/ historical figure is oversaturated, which means that the meanings that accrue to him (or her, but mostly him) are in excess of any empirical record and accumulate like barnacles without any regard for the law of contradiction. Attitudes, especially negative ones, toward Jews flourish whether there are Jews around or not. Anti-Semitism survives in Poland even though most of its Jews have either fled or been killed. There is anti-Semitism in China, but few actual Jews.

Read the rest, if not for the content then for the superb writing skills Fish displays.

Oh, this...

So you can have the fierce barbaric Jew (Israel as the atom-bomb wielding destroyer of Arab armies, at least in 1967) and the insidiously bland Jew, the obsequious figure who, while no one’s looking, takes control of everything. That means that whatever a Jew does there are a number of pre-packaged, and often mutually exclusive, narratives in which to place him, and, by and large, they are not positive ones.

I find the narrative of the 'fierce' Jew more palatable than that other, personally. It's a tough world out there; when you're stuffed between the sea and a mob of near-beasts (yes, I said it! BEASTS! strap on some more bombs and shoot off some more unguided rockets, Palis, you've earned that qualifier from me!) you must have a brilliant , tough finish. I've great respect for Israel, Israelis, and their resilience. And, fierceness.

Mmmmmm...fierce....

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