Co-existence? They'll have none of that in Wales

An exhibit in Cardiff meant to celebrate peace through football was abruptly shuttered, following "complaints". The Cardiff library was hosting the photographic exhibit, meant to show how sports builds bridges across political divides in advance of Sundays Wales vs Israel game at Cardiff City Stadium.

Photographers Gad Salner and Vadim Tarasov highlighted  Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities playing together throughout Israel  lower-league football throughout Israel.

From the Daily Mail:

The project, created by photographers Gad Salner and Vadim Tarasov, records how football can bring rival communities together. It has previously been displayed at the Guardian offices.

The photography project focuses on lower-league football throughout Israel, emphasising how Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities come together through the beautiful game.
One example is the Betar Nordia Football Club in Jerusalem, a small, fan-owned club that promotes diversity and sportsmanship, while opposing violence and racism in football. The club’s Jewish participants play alongside their Arab Muslim and Christian colleagues.

'From forgotten Arab villages in the north to dusty Jewish neighborhoods in the south, we visit places where the seemingly ever-present tension between cultures evaporates, and where diversity is embraced, encouraged and celebrated,' said the photographers in a statement.

Judith Woodman, leader of the opposition at Cardiff Council, called the censorship
"a disgraceful reflection on our city."

Read it all here.

Coates, Goldberg and a Question of Approach

Another day, another comment thread online, and the Makabit is slinging comments with another 'critic of Israeli policies'. This isn't a good one; it's like playing ping-pong with a robot. His moves are predictable, his shell impenetrable, and we can do this for as long as I'm willing to send the ball back across the table. As the conversation deteriorates, it gets even more routine.

We've identified one another's agendas, and are no longer even pretending to talk. "Israel seized a country," he says. That's not true, by any possible definition, I tell him. He doesn't bother to bring the facts he's been demanding from everyone else, defaulting to telling me that I 'know' I'm not right about that. Finally, he informs me that if I want people to think I'm a peacenik (a goal and title I hadn't actually laid claim to), I should change my name. "Makabit" apparently, is too warlike...darn those indigenous freedom fighters!

I sign off, bored and frustrated, and vowing, probably in vain, not to engage in this sort of futile fight again. And I start thinking:

Ta-Nehisi Coates has a reputation for having an excellent and active group of commenters at his Atlantic blog. I read there often, and occasionally comment, and I find it to be an extremely pleasant experience. The commentariat is bright, literate, and interested in the issues Coates addresses. Conversely Jeffrey Goldberg only recently opened comments on his blog at the Atlantic, and the results have been mixed.

Goldberg is currently carrying on a running feudette with Glenn Greenwald over Greenwald's use and defense of the anti-Semitic slur "Israel-Firsters", but I think that any widely read blogger with a positive attitude toward Israel would have drawn a similar crowd. The words 'anti-Israel' are enough to bring them popping out of the woodwork. "Define anti-Israel!" they scream. "Was is racist when South Africa was boycotted? Define anti-Semitic! Give us links!"

Under these circumstances, any conversation deteriorates back to the ping-pong game. You have to start from basic principles every time, going over the essential history of the region, fighting over framing. Then the rest of the bag of tricks. It is combative, and mind-numbingly repetitive. Trying to have an intelligent conversation about Israel, anti-Semitism, or pretty much anything else under these circumstances is like trying to play chess under artillery fire.

How does Coates do it? I started to wonder. After all, he frequently writes about race in the United States, not exactly a non-controversial subject on the Internet, and one with its own endless framing arguments. How has he created a place where people have intelligent discussions about the things he posts, without endlessly setting the discussion back to, "Wah, wah, you say everything's racist! Define racism succinctly! I want links!"?

Well, Ta-Nehisi Coates doesn't allow people to show up and pee on the floor, and he bans people when they do that. I've watched him do it. He's not liked by some for it. They complain bitterly, elsewhere. If you show up referencing racist authors, or pouting that you could say that affirmative action is black supremacism, and why doesn't anyone want to discuss that, or wanting to go over the complicity of Africans in the slave trade, Coates will show you the door. Then you can go and talk about what a coward he is on your own blog, and the rest of us can actually talk about whatever the subject du jour is.

Most pro-Israel blogs with discussion-prone comments sections don't do this, and many blogs (by no means most, or all, I have no statistics) dealing with racial issues or gender issues do.

I suspect we don't do it because we think that banning commenters who are being asses is censorship. We don't want to provide ammunition to people who already like to claim they're being silenced all the time. I think we've also developed within the BlogoZion a belief that action online means addressing these people, all the time, and debating them wherever they show up.

It's kind of pointless, though, and I think it hinders our ability to talk about more nuanced issues. What would happen if, instead of indulging the "Define anti-Israel!" crowd, Goldberg simply blocked them and left them to go elsewhere? Would we be able to talk about a wider range of subjects? Would people feel freer to explore nuance, without the artillery fire coming in from everywhere?

Beyond the practical, I think that setting standards for discussion about Israel and enforcing them is a healthy move toward reframing. It says: Israel exists, and has a right to. We won't discuss this any longer, and we won't allow the conversation to be derailed with false history or attempts to put words in our mouths. We won't waste our time endlessly playing games with people whose clear agenda is to harm Israel, any more than we waste our time playing games with people who want everyone to agree that racism is over, and women have too much power in modern society.

What would it mean to actually log out of conversation with the armchair anti-Israel crowd? What could we do with that time? That emotional and spiritual energy?

Mocha board dismisses accusations of "Pressure" regarding Gaza children's art exhibit

Appearing on KQED radio, on Forum with Michael Krasny, Museum of Children's Art Board member Randolf Belle dismissed allegations of "pressure" in the decision of the Childrens Museum not to show the controversial exhibit. This was broadcast at 9:30, on Wednesday, September 28th.

According to Mr. Belle:

"This is absolutely not a matter of censorship because we would not have taken the show in the beginning. This was literally a matter of our capacity and resources to deal with this thing when it started getting out of hand. We may have made some missteps along the way just in the process but there was no funding at risk or anything like that. when we heard from enough parents that they did not want the images shown where their kids would be unsupervised looking at them we could not dismiss that."

Mr. Belle continued

"This became an absolute distraction and it started jeopardizing the organization.... Our mission is to keep the doors open for the 25,000 kids we serve per year, the 50+ schools, the 30 + people we employ..."

"Yes, we got calls from the Jewish Federation, but we also got calls from quite a few parents. That's who our audience is and they did not want the images up in our public spaces where their kids would be unsupervised"

Contrast that with the near hysterical claims of MECA Barbara Lubin: "Unfortunately, this disturbing incident is just one example of many across the nation in which certain groups have successfully silenced the Palestinian perspective, which includes artistic expression. Last year, the Jewish Federation of North America and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs launched a $6 million initiative to effectively silence Palestinian voices even in “cultural institutions.” It was all about the wealthy Jews, Lubin concluded: "All of us at MECA would like to extend our deepest thanks to the many friends and people of conscience who took a stand against the pro-Israel groups that use their enormous financial resources to silence Palestinian voices. "

The Museum of Childrens Art had proposed a compromise to MECA, offering to display the materials. It was ultimately refused. Instead, MECA chose to protest the museum, forcing children's birthday parties scheduled for the weekend to be cancelled. The children of Oakland ultimately became "collateral damage" as MECA forced their political agenda on the public.

Listen to the entire broadcast here.

For more information on the Gaza Childrens' Art Exhibit see:
Sides divided after children’s museum in Oakland cancels art show by Gaza kids

Museum was right to cancel Gaza kids’ art exhibit

Gaza children’s art finds new venue

How much adult influence went into the "childrens" art of Gaza?:

MECA: The Middle East Childrens Alliance. Fanning the Flames of Conflict

Middle East Children´s Alliance (MECA) and its founder Barbara Lubin have dedicated considerable time and energy since 1988 demonizing the only Jewish state in the world.

From NGO Monitor:

According to the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) website, “[t]he Middle East Children’s Alliance is the fiscal sponsor for ISM-USA.” Donations for ISM’s campaign to “interfere with the construction of the annexation barrier” can be made to “MECA (ISM-USA Fund).”
MECA organizes delegations to “Palestine/Israel” where participants can “witness the impact of the Israeli occupation and…learn about refugees, land confiscation, political prisoners…” Trip highlights include learning “about the origins of the Palestinian refugees and the Right of Return, and how it can be implemented” (emphasis added).
MECA founder and Executive Director Barbara Lubin wrote “I think that the Jewish State is racist to the core.” Lupin refers to the 1948 “ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population” and wrote that “[t]he concept of ‘Jewish morality’ is truly dead. We can be fascists, terrorists, and Nazis just like everybody else.”
In an interview, MECA Director of Gaza Projects, Dr. Mona El-Farra, explained that MECA refused USAID funding because it came with the condition that they promise “not [to] give any help or any aid whatsoever for the families of the militiamen, or their relatives, or anyone related to ‘terrorist attacks’” because “we consider it resistance” (emphasis added).
MECA raised funds for British MP George Galloway’s “Viva Palestine” convoy “following the massacre in Gaza.”
Partners include pro-Palestinian groups such as Addameer, Badil, the Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign, Bat Shalom, and Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP). Also partners with the Lajee Center, which refers to the “Israeli regime of Apartheid, colonization, and belligerent occupation.”

Its hard to ignore the hypocrisy of Barbara Lubin, currently whimpering "censorship" to anyone who will listen. The founder and executive director of MECA cut her activist teeth censoring others free speech. She was an organizer of a campaign to prevent Benyamin Netanyahu from speaking in Berkeley, nearly 11 years ago. Protesters, lead by Lubin forced the cancellation of a speech by Netanyahu, leading Berkeley Mayor Shirley Dean to declare "We must never, ever forget that Free Speech is for everyone, not just the politically correct."

From Sf Gate:

"Never in America have I waited, and been turned away from a paid lecture that was unofficially canceled by a mob shouting accusations at me," wrote ticket-holder Judy Norris. "Harassed, hassled, with accusations shouted at me and my friend, as though we were Uzi-carrying slayers of children, we, two quiet ladies from Moraga . . . wanted to hear both sides of the issue."

Yep. Thats Barbara Lubin and MECA.

Barbara Lubin also organized a disruption of the San Francisco Jewish Community Center four years ago, terrorizing the seniors, children and others who came to use the JCC’s services. Her justification? There were classes being held at the community center to commemorate Israel's 60th anniversary. Barbara and over a dozen "activists" were subsequently arrested for their 2 1/2 hour rampage.

Given the reputation and history of Barbara Lubin and MECA, her statement "For 23 years, MECA has been a witness to how pro-Israel organizations can intimidate groups and individuals " rings hollow. In truth, for years, the pro-Israel community has been a witness to Barbara and her followers resorting to lies, bullying and veritable temper tantrums, in an effort to stifle their opposition. The situation at the Museum of Childrens Art is just a continuation .

Israeli Books Banned In Scotland

Dort wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man auch am Ende Menschen.
--Heinrich Heine

You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
--Ray Bradbury

Via Virtual Jerusalem: A Scottish municipality has banned from its libraries books by Israeli authors and that were printed or published in Israel.

The West Dunbartonshire Council, consisting of towns and villages west of Glasgow, ordered new books by Israeli authors to be banned from the council's libraries, according to reports.

The ban reportedly was ordered after last year's raid by Israeli commandoes on a ship attempting to break Israel's blockade on Gaza that led to the death of nine Turkish nationals. The ban followed a decision made 2 1/2 years ago following the Gaza war to boycott goods produced in Israel. According to that law, the council and all its public bodies are forbidden to sell goods that originated from Israel.

Read the rest.

Amos Oz, David Grossman, S.Y. Agnon, Batya Gur, Dorit Rabinyan, Sami Michael, Naomi Ragen, Yehuda Amichai, Tom Segev, Orly Castel-Bloom, Dan Pagis, Yoram Kaniuk, Emil Habibi, Michal Govrin...a language, a nation, an entire literature rejected. I'm sure these censors feel themselves quite smugly in the right. I can't begin to express my fury.

We are only just beginning to sound the vile depths to which the delegitimization campaign against Israel is sinking. This sounds fine, now. Books may only be bought from countries with a right to exist...which would be all of them, except for Israel.

I'm making no excuses for the West Dunbartonshire Council. I don't care if they're vicious or well-meaning, ignorant or knowledgeable, they have set out to be part of the mechanism of destroying a nation.

Hat tip to Vicious Babushka, both for being one of the first people to bring this story to my attention, and for the Bradbury quote, which I would have never remembered.