Thursday, January 22, 2015

Opinion: I acknowledge my Jewish privilege

Maital Friedman wrote that in honor of Martin Luther King Day, we Jews must acknowledge our Jewish privilege.  I think she's right.

So here we go:

1. I acknowledge my privilege to be hated by both Right and Left. By Muslims and Christians.  I'm even privileged to be hated by anti-racists.

2.  I acknowledge my privilege to be the only ethnic group in the United States that needs to fortify my schools, my community centers and my places of worship.  But, as the Overland Park JCC attack showed, I can't fortify my parking lots.

3. I acknowledge my privilege to be the scum of the earth and at the same time be it's puppet master.

4. I acknowledge my privilege to be accused of being behind every major and minor disaster and terror attack.  From 9/11 to the Paris attacks to MH370.

5.  I acknowledge my privilege to fear to identify as a Jew in certain areas of the US today, such as college campuses.

6. I acknowledge my privilege to be denied the right to my identity, my history and my homeland.  In today's United States, intellectuals expound on the idea of 'wiping out' my homeland, home to more than 6 million Jews, without ever wondering what will happen to the millions of refugees that will result (assuming they won't just be 'wiped out' as well).

7. I acknowledge my privilege to have a pseudonym - 'Zionist' - which is fine and dandy to hate and discriminate against.

8.  I acknowledge my privilege to have spilled blood in the fight for racial equality, and today to be accused of masterminding racial inequality (as in "Jews enslaved the Blacks").

9. I acknowledge my privilege to have people like Maital Friedman deny the very existence of antisemitism, claim that it's a problem of the past, or claim that it exists but that Jews make too much of it, especially compared to other less-privileged minorities.

American Jews are privileged to live in a country that accepts them so, but it hasn't always been like that and nobody promises us it always will be.   Friedman might be privileged to live in a neighborhood where she has never ever encountered antisemitism.  She's lucky.

I offer her to read through Wiki's articles on Antisemitism in the US and Antisemitic attacks in the US.

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