225. The Jew's Problem Is a Swede's Problem

 

Jews.  They're members of my family.  And I'm a Swede, whose ancestors were the goddam Vikings.  Now we're looked at as models of Western enlightenment, yes, but let me tell you, when a Swede from the Midwest got the GI Bill and went to college the people he looked up to for enlightened intellectual rigor were all Jews, big-city Jews, East Coast Jews, agnostic Jews, CCNY atheist Jews, the hardest sell a Bible-believer ever faced.  Liberal if not radical, every one of them.  To some they and their kin in Europe were "the culmination of the Enlightenment."  In any case, they represented to me what a Jew was.  Now how the hell, how the hell, I ask in dumb Swedish bewilderment, how the hell can they be connected with the Jews called "liberal" these days and for some time?  Are they the same people, the very same people, who backed, through AIPAC, every Israeli government, liberal or conservative, in the settlement of the West Bank?  Settlement by fundamentalists!  People holding the belief of barbarous ancestors (if Hume didn't hesitate to call the ancient Jews "barbarous" I'm not going to) that the God of their Bible gave that land to them.  "Lordy, what a reason!" says Reason.  It's too much for me, and what makes it hurt is that they're in my family, and I can't quit them.  Wherever you grew up, Sweden or Midwest or Spain or New Zealand, you can't resign from Western culture.  (Not now, anyway, not when you've had such a good look at the alternatives.)

I can't talk to fundamentalists but I can yell.  And I can't help yelling because I, along with a lot of others, see the settlements as the main obstacles to peace in the Middle East.  "Hey you, Gush Emunim, putting your 'facts on the ground' before the first intifada.  You thought you were sticking it to the Ashkenazim, your fellow Jews, the European Jews.  Well I have news for you.  You were also sticking it to every culture-conscious Swede in America.  And we're sore as hell.  You're just lucky we're not running that part of the family because you know what we'd do, little brothers?  We'd send you back to your room.  'Take a time out.  Think about growing up.'" 

That's just blowing off steam though, maybe Viking steam.  I still don't know what gave these children the idea they could push grownups around.  Or think they could get away with such lousy arguments.

Know how to bottle me up (at the risk of sending me over my own barbaric edge)?  Just point to the fact that they still are getting away with their lousy arguments.