Fighting For identity – Boundless Communication in the Blogosphere / Don Alphonso

by Don Alphonso (Rainer Meyer)

Of course, there´s something special about blogging as a Jew in Germany. Even if you don´t have a blog, people ask you for your opinion about Israel and especially about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It doesn´t matter if you have ever been to Israel, or if you’re even interested in the Middle East: They want to know your point of view – especially, if it matches theirs. And I can assure you: Every German has his or her own view on this region and on what´s going on here.

As far as I can see, there have been significant changes in the typical German approach on this issue. You know, when I started with Jewish journalism 10 years ago, it was common to start the debate with: “It isn´t possible to criticize Israel, because THEY – “the JEWS” – will call us antisemitic – BUT – and after that “BUT” journalists said what they wanted to say. That behaviour was impolite at least, because they accused you – The JEW – of accusing them, even if you didn’t start arguing. And it’s obvious what they want to do: They want to feel the victim, because they have learned that the strength of the position of the victim in any debate lies not with clubs, machine guns, fists or the atomic bomb. The victim is always the one to get the attention, the victim is weak, the victim needs understanding – at least that’s what they think when they say this “BUT”…

Before blogging, I had a couple of call-in-shows on some radio stations, so I am used to very fast and nearly uncensored conversations. Nevertheless, on the radio, you talk to people before you put them on the air, and if you see that the person on the line is in it for a fight, he’s either a racist or simply nuts – you don’t let someone like that on the air. Blogging is quite different, because if anyone has comments, he or she can log in and say what s/he thinks is right. This means that the limitations, any limitation of other media conversations are gone, and they will never come back until I close down the comment function. But that’s something I won’t do, since it would reduce my blog to a simple website, a one-way-communication, that would once again limit the conversation between German Jews and Non-Jews. So, what can I do? I can delete their posts, I can argue and I can call them idiots – nevertheless it’s not as easy as it had been on the radio show. It’s hard work keeping up with the pressure, because things have changed. This is nothing to be sad about, it´s the consequence of my freedom of expression, the few cons in a new world of pros, a totally new experience of telling, talking and listening. Being aware of those new privileges every time I start writing makes it quite simple to get on with the dark side of blogging.

I still have those guests who want to be THE VICTIM OF THE JEW, but there were some major changes. The most important change in Germany is a blogging community of what I would call “false friends”. We have to face the fact that Judaism is very attractive for all kinds of “Yenta” – Gschaftlhuber we call them in Germany, – over-identified people and lots of – sorry to say – aryans who want to be the better Jew. Inspired by their American counterparts like the racist Islamophobic Blog “Little Green Football“, the “Journalist” Oriana Fallaci or the former left wing renegate Henryk M. Broderlink!, they founded a network of Pro-western, pro-Israel as anti-Arab blog links!. Their political agenda forges together people from very different backgrounds from the leftist “Antideutsche” to racists LInkS! who like Israel because they kill Arabs. And those guys in fact act as a pressure group doing the things we heard of yesterday: Writing emails to the editor, trying to find “lies” of the hated “Mainstream Media”, acting as a watchdog. They’re connected by an Organisation of Jewish bravado from Frankfurt called “Honestly Concerned”. And not being like them, anti-Arab and pro-Israel, makes you an antisemite – they think.

So, what we have in the German Blogosphere are two very loud, very aggressive groups: The supporters of Israel and the friends of Palestine. They try to influence public opinion, and they try to get ranked at Google News to get some relevance for their point of view. At least they have succeeded in bringing the topic down to a really low level – for example, if someone writes about them stealing pictures from Associated Press or Magnum, he finds himself in a storm of outraged scum of the internet raiding the comments. All this takes place almost without Jews, Israelis or Palestinians. In fact, there is just one well-known German Jewish Blogger: He calls himself Don Alphonso, it’s me… And I´m somewhere in the middle, which is no place at all, since both sides want you to decide where you belong. Pro-Israel and Pro-Western or Pro-Palestinian and anti-Islamophobic. I have my own point of view: I’m slightly leftist, I’m not religious at all, I love Jaffa, but I don’t care for the Old City of Jerusalem, I am a strong supporter of Israel but I’d like to give away the territories – and nothing but the territories – for a fast, fair peace in the Middle East. I hate those fuckheads with the bomb belts, I don´t mind if Zahal hunts them down. Nevertheless I think that the last war in Lebanon was a terrible failure or mistake. All together, you see, this point of view is not uncommon in Israel or in the German Jewish Community. It’s a slightly left of mainstream position.

But when it comes to Germany, it makes me a target of the extremists. In fact, some of the right wing German bloggers call me “antisemitic” and put me together with people like Naom Chomsky. Some of the pro-Palestinians call me an “Israeli Nazi”. And that’s what separates blogging from all the other kinds of journalism that I have experienced before. These are the guys who write stupid letters you’d normally throw in the waste paper basket. In former times, you just opened it and you knew what kind of idiot came along, and you were really glad that those guys didn’t have access to the media – With blogging, they have. And sadly enough, they find supporters among people I would call “Journalistic Traitors”. I will never understand why the Spiegel or N-TV don’t give guys like Henryk Broder or Ulrich Sahm the boot. They have their own political agenda, just fill in “Jew” where they write Arab and you know where you are. Of course those bloggers argue against forced marriages among Muslims – I never read any sentence against “arranged” marriages among Jewish ultra-orthodox. The Muslim is a always the born terrorist, and the Israeli is the born freedom fighter.

What does that mean for me and my Blog?

Well, it means that having a modest position and even good arguments don’t help you at all. If you simply go on with decent texts like in the newspaper, you won’t survive out there. The readers don’t expect well balanced articles; they want to know what you think. That of course tears down the fences between a neutral article and an Op Ed, but after a couple of those deadly sins of journalism, you get used to it, and the readers aren’t stupid – they get to know your point of view and accept you as a character. You have to be more outspoken. You are no longer the German correspondent of the Aufbau or the editor of Tachles, you no longer control the information. You´re just a blogger and have the same 1024 times 764 Pixels on the computer screen that anybody else has. And the blogosphere is more about comment than information. In fact, not one of the pro Israeli or pro Palestinian bloggers has ever smelled tear gas in Ramallah. They just see the hate they want to see, and their supporters cheer and applaud.

So, my answer is to defend my decent position with methods that aren’t decent at all. It would be dead wrong to give in like a journalist who is afraid of the readers reactions. It would be dead wrong to do it in Jesus-style and ask for another stab. What really helps is joining the debate and writing things you would never write as a journalist. As a journalist you try not to give any reader the chance to feel humiliated by your point of view. They pay for the newspaper, they are your customers, you sell them to the advertising industry. Blogging doesn’t have to care at all, and even more, I simply don’t want to write stuff those people actually enjoy, any way. Blogging as a Jew in Germany means to make clear who you are and who they are. Of course you’re humiliating them. I would never ever call someone an Aryan in a newspaper – but there’s no editor-in-chief in the blogosphere, and if I think that one of my German fellow bloggers deserves to be reminded of who he is, I tell them that they should shut the fuck up for the next 1000 years. If you read their xenophobic blogs, you would know that those friends of Israel are simply good old German racists that spare Israel, because being for Israel is the ulimate proof they’re not racist at all. This is something you have to say on the Internet. It isn’t polite, it isn’t friendly, and of course you’d never ever say things like this in a normal debate – but again, I, as a Jew, have to make clear what I’m standing for, whereas they must not say anything.

By being “decent” you get no attention. Of course, this is just my way to handle the new situation. That’s how I cross the boundaries of journalism. Others might find their own solution, perhaps a softer friendlier approach might help – you can tell them about your feelings, your history, your family, although you have to bear the risk of getting hurt. Blogging means having all possibilities, but even more to think about what is the right story, the right argumentation, the right word for what you want the readers to think about. Blogging can make you a brilliant entertainer, but it can also make you a lousy, little wannabe-dictator no one wants to hear. The new freedom of speech does not mean freedom from of responsibility: The lack of control gives the blogger all the power and, sadly, all the power to do the wrong thing. Breaking communicative rules in order to be heard might be a new boundary in the blogosphere. All the hate you get in the comments of your blog shouldn’t stop you from writing, but it gives you a good sense of what others won´t like to hear from you…

Of course, it’s not always a pleasant thing to give bloody noses to those who see the Jews as easy prey. It has nothing to do with understanding or having an unbiased position. But – if you’re the right stuff, you’ll have great fun defending your Jewish position out in the blogosphere. Just stick to what you think and what you are, and make clear that it is what you think.

Above all, tell stories. What I found out is: Nothing ever can be as convincing as a good story. Of course, you have to stick to the facts, you must not lie, but simple information isn’t the whole thing. Judaism, Israel and the Middle East conflict is so strange to Germans in some respects, that information alone won’t do the job. But if you blog on your own -involved, sometimes frightened, sometime s funny and even uncertain, if you tell them what makes you feel that way, they may understand. I’m not the one who has infinite wisdom, I can just show the reader what makes me think the way I do. For example: right now I’m blogging about my travels through Israel, and of course being here has changed my opinion. I really fell in love with the old center of Jaffa, and my journey to Jerusalem, where I had to switch from a broken down train to a bus and finally to a cab, doing 60 miles an hour in Jerusalem while simultaneously typing an sms. He assured me once again that Jerusalem is overestimated – until I saw the beautiful architecture of the Van Leer Institute. Then I saw the old desecrated Muslim graveyard, which was really a shocking experience, a poster of Reb Schneerson, whom I actually don’t like, and after that I went to the fancy Colony Restaurant -the narration of the good, the bad and the ugly in Jerusalem might give the reader a better understanding of why I will never immigrate to Israel, something many Germans think. It also might illustrate why I’m not a staunch supporter of Israel, just a Jew coming to Israel, and anyone with other experiences can comment on my opinion. This is not only my chance to write about me and as often as I want to – it’s a chance to start a German-Jewish discussion far beyond the stereotypes presented in the media, which concentrate on the holocaust and the body count in the middle east. The shooting of Palestinians or Israelis is a topic which they print in small print- but no one will tell the story of what´s going on at the night at the Abulafia bakery in Jaffa, or at the graveyard five minutes from here.

And that’s why I love blogging. It’s a completely new access to publicity, especially because it breaks down all the boundaries of the press – it brings the author and the reader to nearly the same level, and… it is a fight over reality through your own identity.

Blog posts on the the conference and the visit to Israel: http://www.gtblog.de/press/?cat=7