Prometheus 6   

Despite the fact that I am Jewish, my experience of antisemitism in the US has been rather benign and easy to dismiss as the ignorant knee-jerk rants of poor white kids who I knew were getting smacked around by angry frustrated fathers at home. I had a much keener appreciation of the virulence of racism. Maybe it was watching Gone with the Wind, or seeing an old black and white photograph of a lynching, or old racist caricatures of slaves, or just studying US history at school -- but I got it. I got how ugly and evil and creepy and violent racism is -- as it was acted and spoken and felt in the US. I mean, the evil of it -- when you really let yourself understand what "ordinary" white folk perpetrated against black americans -- the evil of it chills me deeply and primally like a story of ancient horror by Lovecraft.

In any case, it was in my early twenties -- watching Shoa -- that I first understood that Jews were the target of hate that deep and old and evil as well. So now I find myself a bit of an anomaly politically. Firmly on the left in terms of US policies, and firmly on the left in terms of Israeli policy, but I also consider myself a Zionist. I am in favor of a Palestinian state, yes. But I am also acutely sensitive to the reality that many "friends" of the Palestinians use [unconsciously or not] legitimate criticism of Israeli policy as a convenient pressure valve for an enmity they have been carrying deep in their bones for centuries.