Unpacking contrary Jews 
Unpacking contrary Jews

No one knows the contrary Jewish mind better than the Almighty, who seems to accommodate it. In one breath the Jews are warned against carving graven images, next they are instructed to carve graven images for a tabernacle wherein the Almighty proposes to dwell. Were the twelve tribes coded to be perverse?  

Meanwhile, such contrary behaviour as we find among the far Jewish Left is harder to figure out than the Sin of the Golden Calf. Like or dislike that element –too big to ignore – the issues it fights for, and the allies it picks, come together in a paradox – one that packs a kick, and more than a dollop of bigotry. Whether paradox or perversion, weird or wonderful, Jews bed down in movements that hate Jews. 

The question is, why cannot the cleverest among them see it for themselves?  

The stock answers are trite, and do no credit to Jews on the Right who dish them up. Jaundiced and unverifiable, they have a touch of the incongruous. On top of all they miss the mark. Take your rabbi Israel-basher. Why would a self-hating Jew become a rabbi? Or how could a liberal ideologue brag of being deeply connected to Jewish roots? Thorny problems indeed!

Take your rabbi Israel-basher. Why would a self-hating Jew become a rabbi? Or how could a liberal ideologue brag of being deeply connected to Jewish roots?
Thankfully a more concrete and consistent answer has moved to the fore. It begins at the  University of Illinois, and a flyer with the unpromising title, “Ending white privilege.”  If you were not aware of a scourge on the land, you will be after imbibing the flyer. The far-left apparently go to bed and wake up with the idea fixe that they are fighting a war – a just one. 

The obsession with white privilege indeed goes to the core of many movements in vogue– from BDS to Black Lives Matter; from Women against Trump to Occupy Wall Street; from affirmative action to ‘Reclaiming the City’ – a cause that lately popped up as a speaking head at the foot of Table Mountain. 

A general idea must grow out of some particular idea. White privilege obeys that rule. The  particular idea is identified with clinical care in the flyer: “Ending white privilege starts with ending... Jewish privilege." There it is again – the oldest hate of all. Everything that was thought about Jews in the past has found a home in what trending hashtag causes think about them now. 

Cape Town is rife with wars on white privilege. The once world class university on the slope of Table Mountain is being eaten from the inside by one. Another war – on Jewish white privilege – is in the crosshairs of a Cape Town movement tinged with envy and malice. 

Two outfits in the city, one Jewish-run, the other black, have come together to stop the government sale of closed down Tafelberg School to a Jewish trust. The latter would keep the property for education. The former would have the government build low cost housing on it. Unprivileged people of color, the argument goes, merit to be housed more than Jewish kids merit to be schooled on the Tafelberg property. It is only right and proper that the working class (another name given to people of colour) should live close to their work. It is just and fair that unprivileged people “experience Sea Point’s amenities” – that white-skinned Jews unfairly enjoy after Apartheid.

So contrary Jews allied to Reclaim the City people with no love lost for Jews, are pressing the government to rescind the sale to Jewish capital (in their every statement one feels that epithet sticking in the antagonists’ throat).  

Facts tend to speak louder than words. One fact is that the usable part of the property is absurdly small – a mere 1,1 ha – for a housing development.  Another fact is that the property is in sought-after Sea Point, which happens to be a part of Cape Town that Jews favour.  Another fact is that sky high property values keep even middle income Jews pipe dreaming about buying a property there. Another fact is that the property is zoned for education and not for housing. Another fact is that vast tracts across the city are equally central, and tailor made for housing development, and would enable the working class to live close to their work. A last fact is that city sites of even higher value than Tafelberg – including a site close by the swanky Waterfront – are being evaluated by government. 

But no – the very thought of privileged Jews gets the goat of contrary Jews and their bed mates. The trumped up right of the underprivileged to live in a swanky suburb overrides the right of Jews to make a school there.…  “Ending white privilege starts with ending Jewish privilege." 

If we look for confirmation that sour motives are involved, that the campaign is a vindictive one, surely the antagonists would focus on far larger sites. Transnet the state-owned rail and port enterprise, owns Culemborg, long earmarked for low cost housing. The site is 50 times the size of Tafelberg. The working class would live close to their work in Sea Point. Yet  Transnet holds onto a site perfect to meet the dream of contrary Jews for people of color.

Do they protest against Transnet? No, they do not. Do they protest about Muslim dominant District Six, more prime land, where heels have dragged forever and a day?  No, contrary Jews and their Jew-averse allies have been as meek as mice. They’ll not utter a peep when 
Black or Muslim ‘capital’ is involved. 

Once, in the heart of Sea Point, underprivileged people were, justly, awarded a tract of land. Did they make home on it? No they did not. The land was too valuable and rates and taxes too high for them. The claimants, acting rationally, there and then sold off their claims and moved with their quick millions to other good parts of Cape Town.

Jews for this right and that right – Jews for any right so long as it is not a Jewish right. When a contrary Jew tells off fellow Jews for being too concerned about their own, while they care about the welfare of all, they are, whether contrary Jews admit it or not, recapitulating the anti-Jewish movement which grew to become Christianity.   

So much for their deep connection with Jewish identity – that boast of virtue, that lever for contrary Jews to boost their power. Shaming normal Jews going about their business is their way to bedevil Jewish endeavour.