When I wrote Chabad\u2019s Supernal Jew: Racism in Contemporary Western Judaism I had not yet come across Jewish Israeli and Palestinians as distinct \u2018racial groups\u2019 within the meaning of the crime of apartheid?. Carola Lingaas notes that \u201cRace is a deeply problematic concept based on an understanding of group hierarchies. The wording of Art. 7(2)(h) of the Rome Statute of \u2018regime of systematic oppression and domination\u2019 implicitly refers to this hierarchical idea. Importantly, race is real because thoughts, perceptions and behavior are constructed upon it, but it has no biological foundation.\u201d When I charge Chabad doctrine with fostering a racist set of ideas, I\u2019m referring to Lingaas\u2019 observation that the three hierarchical constructs that make race \u201creal\u201d are foundational in the sect\u2019s doctrine that make the Jewish race and the non-Jewish race\u2014and the domination of the one over the other\u2014\u201creal\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n
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The Rome Statute is, as it were, the constitution of the International Criminal Court (ICC) whose relevant Article stipulates that the crime against humanity of apartheid \u201cis only punishable if it has been committed \u2018by one racial group over any other racial group or groups\u2019.\u201d What is \u201cpunishable\u201d, of course, is \u201cconduct\u201d; not the hierarchical regime which is the socio-political and legal racial setting for and promoter of the \u201cconduct,\u201d the \u201cbehavior\u201d appropriate to the \u201cthoughts and perceptions\u201d of the dominant \u201cracial group\u201d vis-\u00e0-vis the racialized Other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The phrase \u201cby one racial group over any other racial group\u201d entails mutual group exclusivity. In Ms Lingaas\u2019 words, \u201cThe victims [of the crime of apartheid] are targeted for their belonging to another racial group. \u2026 (A)partheid cannot be committed against members of the perpetrator\u2019s own group.\u201d While \u201cthere are no pre-defined criteria that determine the \u2018race\u2019 [of the victims], it is based on the perception of their race\u201d by the dominant group. The oppressed group \u201cis understood as belonging to a hierarchically lower level of mankind, building on the idea of the great chain of being.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Typically, members of the targeted, dominated group are labeled as being \u201cof a lesser value, with lesser intelligence, worth, dignity, and hence humanness.\u201d Chabad doctrine is unique in that it targets the \u201clesser\u201d race precisely because it is human. Jews have the racial advantage for having been \u201cthought\u201d into existence before Creation, and subsequently being created with an innate, inheritable, ineradicable \u201cconnection\u201d with God, embodying \u201ca literal part of God.\u201d Whence the supernal Jew, the Chabad sect\u2019s \u201cthought and perception\u201d of Jews as being the world\u2019s dominating and oppressing \u201choly\u201d race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here are Carola Lingaas\u2019 two concluding sentences, as they apply to the Chabad sect:\u00a0 \u201cIn seeing the Palestinians as one\u2014and arguably a racial one\u2014any other [group] identity markers are erased.\u00a0 Moreover, the characteristics that distinguish Palestinian from Jewish Israeli are determined and defined by the aggressors themselves; if they involve a racialized perception of the Palestinian group membership, the \u2018racial group\u2019 element of the crime against humanity of apartheid is likely fulfilled.\u201d\u00a0 (Note: This reference essay, although less than five pages, is much broader and deeper in analysis than my quotations reveal, drawing on more sources than the Rome Statute.\u00a0 Study it.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The\u00a0thoughts and opinions expressed in the text are the author\u2019s own.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Richard Rothschild <\/p>\n\n\n\n richeroths@yahoo.ca <\/p>\n\n\n\n 09\/22\/2021<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I wrote Chabad\u2019s Supernal Jew: Racism in Contemporary Western Judaism I had not yet come across Jewish Israeli and Palestinians as distinct \u2018racial groups\u2019 within the meaning of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n