cultural baggage: have genes will travel

Its a hot potato and it opens up a long standing internal sore between Eastern European jews and the Western European Hebrew, basically left, secular and more powerful both politically and economically. The African illegal immigration, whether economic, or political puts the mirror of the Israeli society back onto itself and some uncomfortable views on the profound notion of race and nationality. The question of whether the Africans are political or economic refugees, and whether the state is able to deport them is a dicey one;under international law they cannot, the left secular view, but in theory, and in terms of existential arguments there is no clear acceptance of that muddy glass reasoning.The numbers are significant, like America absorbing three million which is absurd, and Israel with its concentrated, pyramidal wealth structure is not affluent. And, no one wants to take the refugees off Israel’s hands, contributing to the witches brew already bubbling in the cauldron…

In the past there was the Jewish limp, the devil’s foot, Jewish hysteria, effeminacy, parasitism, and a string of definition by physical characteristics weel before the onset of mass disseminated anti-semitism. This began with the beginning of physical anthropology in the eighteenth century, pseudo-science mixed with fantasy a dash of Galton and pinch of Darwin. In contrast to—occasional—references to somatic features of the Jews in preceding periods, the eighteenth century did not only put forth a steady stream of literature on their alleged morphological peculiarities, but also tried to “prove” them “scientifically”. Thus, anti-Semitic stereotypes do not necessarily stem from
anti-Jewish attitudes. They can also be construed by—purportedly—“objective” science.He also claimed that Jews could be recognized by a peculiar form of the skull.7 From Blumenbachs investigations onwards, a specific shape of the head was considered a characteristic of the Jews.

---Antisemitic Judensau from 18th Century Frankfurt--- Read More:http://www.qando.net/?cat=551

…Addressing the “infiltration problem,” Knesset Member Miri Regev (Likud) criticized the Israeli government for not sending the African refugees from whence they came, calling them “a cancer in our body.” Danny Danon (Likud) followed up his incendiary speech by posting on Facebook, “Israel is at war. An enemy state of infiltrators was established in Israel, and its capital is south Tel Aviv.” And Michael Ben-Ari, a former member of the racist Kach party, incited the crowd by tapping both into their economic despair and xenophobia, warning them that the Africans would take all available jobs and leave everyone else with nothing. Read More:http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/author/tikkundaily/

---George Rodger TANZANIA. Children from the Wagogo tribe wear special headgear for the circumcision ceremony. 1947--- Read More:http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=ViewBox_VPage&VBID=2K1HZS6R88112&IT=ZoomImage01_VForm&IID=2S5RYDZB4JGP&ALID=29YL53RE3Q5&PN=16&CT=Album

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---George Rodger TANZANIA. Tanganyika. Bagoyangi snake charmers dance with the snakes. pick them up, sing to them and fall into hypnotic trance. There is a secret 'makula', anti snake bite serum, kept in a horn with the chief drummer in case of bites. 1948--- Read More:http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=ViewBox_VPage&VBID=2K1HZS6R88112&IT=ZoomImage01_VForm&IID=29YL5370DTB&ALID=29YL53RE3Q5&PN=17&CT=Album

ADDENDUM:

( see link at end) …According to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, there are presently some 60,000 African asylum seekers in Israel. Most entered the country by foot through its southern border. While they are termed “infiltrators” by the government, some 85 percent are from Eritrea and Sudan, to which Israel has agreed until now not to return them in light of the situations in those countries. They fall under a form of group protection from deportation, but their individual refugee claims are not processed.

A few recent crimes against Israelis that were linked to the African community have recently received considerable attention in the local media. They led to a wave of protest and declarations by politicians against the refugees and asylum seekers. MK Ofir Akunis, a member of Likud and a Netanyahu proxy, is set to promote a Knesset bill which will criminalize Israelis who employ, drive or give shelter to refugees….

ogspot.ca/2011_01_01_archive.html">

---Ultra-orthodox Jews use a welder's helmet and a glass filter to view the partial solar eclipse Fotocredit: Abir Sultan--- Read More:http://konwomyn.blogspot.ca/2011_01_01_archive.html

In addition to a deeply-rooted racism that exists within segments of Israeli society and the continued dehumanizing of minorities, last night’s race riot also occurred because of corrupt economic policies and the rising gap between the rich and poor in Israel – a situation which has left many teetering on an economic precipice. Without minimizing the racist motivations behind what occurred last night, a root cause is partially the same root social justice activists targeted last summer when they crippled Tel Aviv, chanting, “The people demand social justice.”

Last night, poverty-stricken Israelis focused their rage (and prejudice) on a community of dark-skinned scapegoats.Read More:http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/author/tikkundaily/

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( see link at end) …Jewish scientists pointed out that these idiosyncrasies existed only in a certain section of the Jewry, not among all of them. The distinction between “healthy” and “diseased”, or between the physically distinct, “effeminate” and the “normal” Jew, was seen as running along the separation between the Jews of Eastern Europe, known as Ostjuden, and their brethren in Western Europe, the so called Western Jews. Roughly speaking, the Western Jews (the Jews in Paris, London, Berlin and Vienna) represented the liberal part of European Jewry. They were very eager to integrate and assimilate into the middle class of society, and finally adopted to a very large extent the secular values of the bourgeoisie. In contrast to the “Western Jews”, the “Eastern Jews”
still adhered to religious Orthodoxy, which was not confined to religious matters, but exerted a strong influence on their way of living as well. Jewish religious Orthodoxy, and even more so its more radical offshoot, Hasidism, did not separate the secular and the religious world. Instead, religion was all-encompassing and ruled everyday life outside the synagogue as well.

Against this background, there is no denying that a cultural gulf existed between Western Jews and their brethren in Eastern Europe. The division of European Jewry into Eastern and Western Jews was not so much a geographical as a cultural categorization. This cultural borderline was also held to account for the separation between a physically “defective” and a “normal” Jewish type. In advocating a cultural instead of a racial perspective for interpreting the anthropological or medical data on Jews, and thus showing that specific modes of life contributed to somatic traits, Jewish scientists wanted to render the apprehension of “the physically distinct Jew”, which encompassed all Jews, and the concept of race obsolete.

Since the Westjuden had assumed the cultural norms of the bourgeois societies, they hoped that they would no longer be regarded as representing a “physically distinct Jewish type”. It
was only the Ostjuden, who, by adhering to a different culture, were to be described as physically different and diseased….

….In claiming that Jewish Orthodoxy was the cause of physical defects and diseases among the Eastern Jews, the Western Jews wanted to invalidate the assertion that all Jews were different. With hindsight, one sees that this line of arguing was not very successful. First of all, the publications on the peculiarities of the Eastern Jews were used by the Nazis as proof of the “otherness” of the Jews in general and not only of the Eastern Jews. Secondly, the cultural approach in explaining the Jewish idiosyncrasies was undermined by the teachings of “race hygiene”.

A few years ago, a book that primarily deals with the issue of the genetic make-up of Jews was published. Its author claims that some of the genes of the Jews differ from those of non-Jews. Even very segregated Jewish communities, whose members had not been marrying Jews from other regions for centuries, reveal more genetic similarities with the members of distant Jewish communities than with their local non-Jewish environment. This book represents one of the increasing numbers of works on sociobiology, which deviate from the cultural approach to explaining group characteristics. Instead, they resort to nature, especially biology and physiology, as the cause for (Jewish) peculiarities. The new way of interpreting group characteristics has been greatly facilitated by the wide and very uncritical reception of genetics in general. Through the backdoor of sociobiology and genetics, old Jewish stereotypes gain a new lease of life. For example, the aforementioned
book claims that there were a number of—genetically determined—diseases which were characteristic of Jews. This assertion, which has been widely dissipated by a number of publications on genetics, is in full congruence with the concept of a specific Jewish proneness to diseases as it existed at the turn of the twentieth century. Against this background it cannot be denied that the notion of the sick Jew still exists. Basically, the assertion that somebody is sick should be a neutral statement. Yet, it always conveys a sense of being different.Read More:http://web.ceu.hu/jewishstudies/pdf/01_hoedl.pdf