September 10, 2007
The end of dialog
The LA Magazine has a lengthy piece on an altercation between two Jewish public figures that occurred at UCLA a while back. It's apparently become something of a watershed event in the community, highlighting what seem to be increasingly intractable divisions along political lines.
In a nutshell, a well-known, highly-respected rabbi acclaimed for his peace activism physically assaulted a well-known pro-Israeli activist. For pro-Israeli Jews, this highlighted the utter compromise of the Left, as not only are they "weak on Islam" and vaguely anti-Semitic, but they'll actually use violence against those who support the Israeli state. For the Left, this signifies the cynicism, jadedness, and lack of civility of the Right, that they would so provoke a man known for his dovish tendencies to use violence.
If we grant my assumption that this story is indicative of the wider divide between Left and Right outside the Jewish community, I offer the following analysis: the divide is rapidly reaching a point--assuming that point is not already passed--where dialog across the aisle is impossible. I that we're approaching an ideological war every bit as bitter and potentially as destructive as the religious wars of the 17th century. I also think that because we've decided that ideology==religion, that the safeguards we've erected to prevent overt religious conflict will be utterly ineffective in preventing the looming ideological conflict.
NOTE: As of 10:15AM, The server seems to be borked. Hopefully it'll be up again in a hour or two.
