YNet Columnist: Borat's "Kazakhstan" Is Israel
Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of these Israel-firsters. I'm not an ultra-Zionist bent on the indiscriminate expansion of a Herzl idea. I support Israel's right to exist, yes, and I believe in a viable 2-state solution.
But I find myself unable to hold back from questioning, "Just where in the hell does this guy get off talking about Israel like this?"
On YNet today, Columnist B. Michael just goes too far:
Kazakhstan is hereBorat didn't need to use Kazakhstan; he could have portrayed Israel
B. MichaelBut it's especially bad, because with a little forethought, Sacha Cohen could have spared himself this embarrassing fiasco. Had he presented himself as an Israeli reporter to begin with – a country that under some of our strange laws is his as well - he would not have had to lie so much to reveal his interviewees' true character.
This sets the stage. After decrying the moving of the pride parade to the stadium he pejoratively refers to as a "cage" -- completely missing the security, political, and regional considerations (Beit Hanun just didn't happen or is it that the Palestinian community didn't notice? Or maybe Israel has infinite cops?):
Without insulting an innocent country, he could have told how women are banned from testifying in certain courts of law and that religious officials compare homosexuals to beasts. He could have mentioned how if a person is not born to the right people he or she cannot purchase Israeli land. And that to kill minorities is much easier and widespread than picking a protected iris in the Galilee.That rabbis feed their cattle strange crackers during the month of March, so that their milk can be consumed in April…and a series of other humoristic and enlightening rules and regulations.
He could have also talked about the boutique wineries in our country, whose flavor does indeed resemble that of fermented horse urine. He could have done all that without lying, without exaggerating and without getting himself into trouble. Because Borat's Kazakhstan isn't in Kazakhstan, it's here.
Can one get over themselves while simultaneously getting off of their high horse?
First of all, no religion should be derided this much in secular media. Matzah? "Strange crackers"? The New York Times wouldn't even print that! And Golan, Galil, Yarden, and Carmel -- Israeli wines traded at the most exclusive of expositions worldwide -- "fermented horse urine". This is so offensive it's almost art.
And about the "religious officials comparing homosexuals to beasts". No doubt B. Michael was at least alluding to this. Yet I hardly see how an "IDF rabbi in the rank of first-lieutenant from the Home Front Command" who "sent an email to dozens of officers" is a "religious official." He's not chief of anything. No yeshiva, no group of chassidim follow him. But besides that. The religious decrees from Sephardi Chief Rabbi Amar only decried the parade, not the people. Chief Rabbi = Religious Official. Of course, in such a heated debate you can always find a quote or two to support your hypothesis.
The hypothesis being, of course, that dati and charedi people are ignorant, backwards peasants who eke out lives based on superstition. (Oh yeah, we "bilk the public purse" and "use the Torah as a weapon" to keep up with our "one" golden "rule" of "always take". Silly me.)
This is the same type of mindset that is responsible for the anti-Semitic vitriol of hate-filled "Talmud Unmasked" websites.
Only the utmost ignorance of a religion's values and foundations leads people to take lines out of a text and treat them as if they exist in a vacuum. For instance, women not testifying in a rabbinical court. B. Michael could have looked at Hilchot Edut which tells of how the witnesses were interrogated before giving testimony. The Mishnah tells us that the witnesses were asked a series of questions ("What did you see/hear? When did you see/hear it? Where were you? Where was the offender? What time was it? What was he/she wearing? What were you wearing?" etc.) designed solely to make the witness slip up and invalidate his own testimony. A process slightly akin to any "interrogation room" of media fame, a person would get drilled by a rabbinical drill sargeant to the point of near breakdown.
This can be quite emotionally traumatizing. Women were exempted from doing so for this reason. And we also know that when it comes to crimes of sexual victimization, even the verses tell us, a woman need only report her crime according to halacha. (Even marital rape is prosecutable according to many opinions.)
The purchase of Israeli land is subject to a debate so vast that even R' Kook the Chief Rabbi wasn't so clear on it as to not say that heter mechirah -- selling Israeli land to non-Jews for the purposes of Passover mitzvot of not "owning" any leaven -- was a feasible possibility, even if only for a time. Of course, B. Michael apparently felt strongly enough that the camp which forbids such a transaction has the Divine halacha in their favor.
The extent to which Judaism is allowed to be derided in the Israeli media is the extent to which the religious readers of said media feel alienated by it. This is indicative of -- especially in light of the charedi rioting in Jerusalem and the reactions it provoked -- what seems to be an expanding anti-religious prejudice.
Israel is Borat's Kazakhstan? "Throw the Jew Arab down the well?" That's what you get out of Hatikva?
The Torah gets ridiculed, halacha gets overruled by the Israeli Supreme Court -- and charedi people are supposed to not dissent? The "Jewish-controlled" media of the "Jewish State" calls some beliefs "superstition" and insults Jewish religious sensitivities, and in favor of what? The Western pan-secularist paradigm and secularization theory? This is not new, or necessarily confined to the media. Perhaps this is behind some of the rise in non-Zionist and anti-Zionist sentiments among religious Jews (including Mizrachi Jews).
B. Michael would be well served by a reminder -- Israel was founded on the backs of many people who gave their lives for the chance to eat those "strange crackers", and the day a Jew can't get his "strange crackers" and kosher "fermented horse urine" in the "Jewish State" is the day that Israel can say that it has failed. In which case, I'm sure there's a plan B.
Comments
Remember that B. is the brother of Ronni Brison, former Shinnui MK and, IIRC, on the board of Daat Emet, an organization dedicated to "enlightening" Israelis, teaching them that all religious men are potential murderers and active pedophiles, and wiping all traces of religious Judaism out of the State of Israel.
The two brothers grew up religious. I wonder what happened in that household to turn them both so rabidly OTD.
Posted by: Mozemen | November 16, 2006 11:00 AM