December 10, 2009 – Human Rights

Tomorrow morning at 11 the first ever  human rights march  will be taking place in Tel Aviv. Beginning at Rabin Square and marching toward the Tel Aviv Museum, this march is meant to unite all the different movements for civil rights, and I wish them all the luck in this endeavor.  I won’t be there, primarily because I’m otherwise engaged, but also because something about the language disturbs me, the way argumentative and self-righteous rhetoric takes control of individuality and sympathy.  This is one of the reasons I am a dats’lash  (dati lesheavar), a formerly observant person, and can’t  take the rhetoric of the right.  I can’t even bear it when I’m called on to talk about ‘identity.’  ‘Identity-shmidentity’  I said to Dara today, and then suggested we have an international conference by this name.  Maybe I’m just a sucker for individualiry in rhetoric, but i fear very much that we need to learn a rhetoric that includes the ‘other.’  “Right,” I hear myself arguing against myself, “but that’s the way Obama started and just today in accepting the Nobel prize for peace he couldn’t stop himself from using the word ‘evil’ in referring to his enemies.”  i make a good point – it’s easy to be humane and inclusive while i sit in my armchair at home, but if i have someone’s knife at my throat I will not only talk about evil, I will kill him.